This paper explores relationship between ownership structures and operating performance of top Russian commercial banks. The findings revealed that foreign ownership has a positive impact on bank performance thus supporting the view that foreign investors bring best corporate governance practices to improve operating performance. However, it fails to find positive association between managerial ownership and operating performance. Similarly, the results show that state ownership is not related to...

This paper formulates a micro-founded and optimization based choice model where husband and wife make inter-temporal fertility decisions in a life cycle to optimize utilities and household’s wealth subjecting to financial and health constraints, specifically, husband and wife make rational and dynamic decisions about the number of children to produce and the expenditure on children to maximize household’s wealth over life span. Gender differences in decision making about fertility choice and...

Income inequality is one of the most discussed topics of development economics. Starting from Kuznets (1955) many studies have talked about the evolution pattern of inequality through human society. Political dimensions along with economic determinants are used in literature to explain variations of inequality. Among political issues some argue that free market economy and the declining strength of socialist arguments in policy making have meant income inequality continues to rise. In economic front...

The aim of this study was to expose the impact of enrollment timing on the academic performance of students studying the first course in accounting. Correlation and t-test analyses using a sample of 339 students who passed the first course in accounting and were enrolled in one of the more advanced accounting courses during the 2014/2015 academic year at the College of Business Studies in Kuwait were used to test the study’s hypotheses. The results indicate that there was a statistically significant...

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This study is designed to evaluate the impact of stock market development on general price level in five SAARC countries. The estimated results of Panel OLS, Fixed Effect model and Random Effect model has revealed that OLS model is not applicable thus, we have to use panel cointegration to find out the unbiased and normally distributed coefficient estimates to find out how the stock market development influences inflation. The results of long run estimates Fully Modified OLS suggests that in the...

This paper investigates the quality of environmental reporting information by chemical industry in Jordan. The focus is on prescribed accounting principles and reporting practices. Content analysis is utilized to examine and critique evidence. The study demonstrates the extent of environmental reporting in two companies’ annual reports at both national and international levels. The environmental reporting performance is measured against the literature and international initiatives. Results show...

This study examines whether government policies have an impact on non-performing loans (NPL )ratio of domestic banks during dissimilar financial periods from 1994 to 2008.Theinfluence variables in the NPL ratio include the followings: loan to deposit ratio (DL), debt ratio(DB),bank size (ASSETS), earnings per share (EPS), capital adequacy ratio (Basel ratio; BIS) and directors and supervisors shareholding ratio (HOLD). To comprehend the relation between a bank’s ownership structure and its NPL...

The contribution of microfinance to boost economy through poverty alleviation and employment generation is now arguably established all over the world. But based on the societal context of many countries, a new form of microfinance instrument called Islamic microcredit has emerged in the market. This research tries to explore the role of Islamic microcredit in Bangladesh in increasing the borrowers’ income. For that, a total of 87 Islamic microcredit borrowers under the Rural Development Scheme...

In this paper, the relation between hedging and leverage is studied using Indian firm data in the period 2002-2013 as the growth of Indian derivative markets has been rapid during this period following the economic liberalization. The analysis is carried out using a two-stage instrumental variable regression framework. The results show that hedging with derivatives allows firms to increase their debt ratio which results in a higher level of leverage leading to higher firm value from tax shields and...