Issue #1 (Volume 18 2021)

Private equity (PE) stands out significantly in the world as one of the main development tools of the capital market in emerging economies and alternative sources of finance for companies. Particularly, the increase in fund value and continuous returns are objects of intense study in Brazil. The paper aims to find determinants to Brazilian private equity returns, regarding three relevant variables funds characteristics and GDP to a macroeconomic view. A sample of 1,112 PE funds registered at the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM) was used and analyzed by three main variables: period of establishment, equity size, and exclusivity as possible determinants of funds’ performance using multiple regression model and fourth variable GDP is applied as a descriptive variable. The results indicate that older funds had a return premium of 1.5% monthly over young funds, smaller funds had a return premium of 1.4% over larger funds, and exclusivity does not influence the funds’ performance. Thus, the paper provides a basis for the relevant factors that an investor should verify in Brazil’s private equity fund before allocating the resources.

The virtual nature of digital money is fueling the conflict between usability, functionality and trust in the digital form. Institutional trust drivers should move forward in understanding the nature of confidence in digital money. Do central banks digital money (CBDC – central bank digital currency) and private cryptocurrencies demonstrate the same or different trust patterns? The paper used the general regression method to discover the relationship between trust in different forms of digital money and selected variables that may generate this trust. Simple empirical tests were sufficient to find the fundamental importance of age as a confidence driver relevant to CBDC and cryptocurrencies. It is found that traditional factors associated with the inflation history and quality of monetary order (central banks independence and rule of law) do not play a role in the case of CBDC, but are important in the case of cryptocurrencies. Structural features (like FinTech development or social trust) that should support trust in digital money are not found to be important. Societies with larger fraction of younger generations demonstrate higher confidence in centralized and decentralized forms of digital money. This challenges the traditional approach to money and calls into question the future role of monetary stability institutions in the digital age. Digitalization is perceived as an improvement in welfare only when fiat money institutions become fragile. The efficiency and credibility of central banks are not a bonus to confidence in CBDC. This is a challenge for the institutional design of the future digital-based monetary order.

This study aims to examine whether the capital structure and several factors have significant influences on firm value in Vietnam. To achieve this objective, 435 non-financial listed companies have been selected from 2012 to 2019 on Vietnamese stock exchanges. Four groups of firms continue to be chosen from the total to investigate the differences in the outcomes among industries. The results altogether using the GMM method show that the impact of capital structure and other control variables on firm value is significant, yet different across industries: capital structure has a significant positive impact on firm value in the food and beverage industry, but has a significant negative effect on the value of the firm in wholesale trade and construction, as well as real estate industry, while has an insignificant influence on enterprise value considering all industries. Apart from the firm size, the impact of other control factors on firm value also indicates mixed results.

Many investors in order to predict stock prices use various techniques like fundamental analysis and technical analysis and sometimes rely on the discussions provided by various stock market analysts. ARIMA is a part of time-series analysis under prediction algorithms, and this paper attempts to predict the share prices of selected pharmaceutical companies in India, listed under NIFTY100, using the ARIMA model. A sample size of 782 time-series observations from January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2019 for each selected pharmaceutical firm has been considered to frame the ARIMA model. ADF test is used to verify whether the data are stationary or not. For ARIMA model estimation, significant spikes in the correlogram of ACF and PACF have been observed, and many models have been framed taking different AR and MA terms for each selected company. After that, 5 best models have been selected, and necessary inculcation of various AR and MA terms has been made to adjust the models and choose the best adjusted ARIMA model for each firm based on Volatility, adjusted R-squared, and Akaike Information Criterion. The results could be used to analyze the stock prices and their prediction in-depth in future research efforts.

According to the current situation in the world economy connected with the coronavirus pandemic, it is difficult to predict GDP growth. Non-economic factors determine the rate of decline in economies of almost all countries. Accordingly, it is extremely difficult to ensure the stable functioning of financial systems. In this situation, the role of public finance, especially the state budget, significantly increases, given the peculiarities of the formation of different levels’ budgets. This research aims to evaluate state budget structural changes on the example of Ukraine. Based on the linear coefficient and the quadratic coefficient of absolute structural changes, the quadratic coefficient of relative structural changes, and integral coefficients of structural changes the authors analyzed the state of public finance in Ukraine since the formation of the state and local budgets and their optimal use to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on the economy can become one of the factors in maintaining financial stability and developing anti-crisis measures. The forecast values of the growth rate of budget revenues and expenditures confirm that the projected revenue gaps are significantly higher than the projected expenditure gaps. The cost structure of the state budget of Ukraine is characterized as a structure with a low level of differences. The Gatev and Ryabtsev coefficients demonstrate unidirectional dynamics. In contrast, Salai coefficient shows the opposite dynamics, which confirms a lack of stability in the cost structure. From 2008 to 2019, the chain rate of change has a significant variation range.

One of the pressing problems in the modern development of the world financial system is an excessive increase in state debt, which has many negative consequences for the financial system of any country. At the same time, special attention should be paid to developing an effective state debt management system based on its forecast values. The paper is aimed at determining the level of persistence and forecasting future values of state debt in the short term using time series analysis, i.e., an ARIMA model. The study covers the time series of Ukraine’s state debt data for the period from December 2004 to November 2020. A visual analysis of the dynamics of state debt led to the conclusion about the unstable debt situation in Ukraine and a significant increase in debt over the past six years. Using the Hurst exponent, the paper provides the calculated value of the level of persistence in time series data. Based on the obtained indicator, a conclusion was made on the confirmation of expediency to use autoregressive models for predicting future dynamics of Ukraine’s state debt. Using the EViews software, the procedure for forecasting Ukraine’s state debt by utilizing the ARIMA model was illustrated, i.e., the series was tested for stationarity, the time series of monthly state debt data were converted to stationary, the model parameters were determined and, as a result, the most optimal specification of the ARIMA model was selected.

The paper presents an approach to assessing insurance market infrastructure entities’ activity that allows identifying gaps and weaknesses and seeking ways of addressing them in the context of revitalization of such emerging insurance markets as Ukrainian. To determine the impact of costs of insurance market infrastructure entities on the financial performance before taxes resulting from insurance activity, the regression formula is used. It demonstrates significant dependence between financial performance before taxes of insurers and costs of accident commissioner services. Based on this, an assessment approach for groups of insurance market infrastructure entities is created. The assessment results suggest that the efficiency of insurance market infrastructure entities in Ukraine is unsatisfactory (135 points out of 390). To develop infrastructure entities of the insurance market in Ukraine, it is expedient to ensure an effective regulatory framework for all insurance infrastructure entities, including registers, reporting, and a requirement to disclose information on their performance.

Corporates express their intention to reward shareholders during repurchase announcements by maximizing their wealth. However, most empirical research finds that stocks’ performance is poor when repurchase announcements are made, and there are no significant abnormal returns. In the Indian context, the present study examines firms’ real intention behind repurchase decisions. The sample comprises 132 firms listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) from 2012 to 2018. A Tobit regression model has been used on different firm set-up. The empirical results reveal that low stock valuation is the prominent reason for buybacks among corporates. Firms prefer repurchases to provide abnormal returns to the investors; however, the Indian market does not react much positively to the repurchases, and this might be the reason for less encouraging buybacks in the Indian market. Further, the tender offer is the most preferred mode to open market repurchases. In the case of service firms, undervaluation, low earnings, and low debt ratios are the contributing factors impacting repurchases. Firms with low dividend intend to have more buybacks to reduce their tax burden.

Acknowledgment
The infrastructural support provided by FORE School of Management, New Delhi in completing this paper is gratefully acknowledged.

The institution of home ownership provides for the functioning of affordable housing for low-income people and new groups in need of social protection, including the reintegration of migrants to new places of residence.
The aim of the study is to substantiate the priorities of investments into affordable housing for internally displaced persons promoting their adaptation and social reintegration in the context of administrative-territorial decentralization.
The study is based on use of empirical, economic and statistical methods, which in the process of correlation, regression and canonical analysis showed that many indicators that characterize the housing market are closely correlated with the scale and development level of administrative units in Ukraine. To characterize the state and investment attractiveness of the residential real estate market, a set of indicators was used in the modeling: population, the number of employed, household income, regional domestic product, volume of commissioned housing, construction investments, regional human development index, total housing stock, housing prices in the regions of Ukraine and Kyiv. The most significant parameter that affects the volume of housing construction is the amount of investments into per capita housing construction.
The article also discusses the housing market situation, which differs in regions or some cities due to the significant differentiation of their development, which affects the ability to obtain affordable housing. The implementation of regional development programs should determine investment priorities of social protection, particularly the possibility of buy-out schemes through the mechanism of leasing of social housing by internally displaced persons.

Acknowledgment
This research was funded by a grant from the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine “Reforming the lifelong learning system in Ukraine for the prevention of the labor emigration: a coopetition model of institutional partnership” (No. 0120U102001).

This article aims to empirically examine corporate governance features and their association with Indian listed companies’ profitability. Thirty-three listed firms are selected from the top 100 companies in India. Corporate governance is defined by two parts: board of directors (size, structure, diligence) and audit committee (size, structure, diligence). In contrast, the profitability of Indian listed firms is calculated by two indicators: return on assets (ROA) and earnings per share (EPS). The outcomes concerning ROA reveal that board diligence, size of audit committee, audit committee composition, diligence of audit committee, and size of a company has a significant relationship with ROA. In contrast, board size and board composition have an insignificant association with ROA. Concerning earnings per share (EPS) model, the results show that size of audit committee, audit committee composition, diligence of audit committee, and firm size have a significant relationship with EPS. In contrast, board size, board composition, and board diligence have an insignificant association with EPS. The results may be of benefit to those scholarly researchers, practitioners, and governors who are interested in exploring the quality of corporate governance practices in an emerging market such as India and its effect on firms’ profitability.

This study aims to examine the relationship between financial inclusion indicators and bank performance in Palestine. The study population and its sample include all 15 banks operating in Palestine and cover the period 2006 to 2016 with panel data from 162 observations. To interpreter the variables, the study uses the volume of loans to SMEs (usage), banking penetration, number of ATMs and branches (access), and online banking, the latter if it is a dummy variable. Further, the study uses operational profits, total revenues and ROE as bank performance indicators and dependent variables. Using empirical analysis, the results indicated that banking penetration tools, branching and ATMs, could enhance bank performance. Despite the decline in lending to SMEs, this factor could positively improve the performance of banks in Palestine. In general, financial inclusion helps banks improve their performance and increase their revenues. This study recommends that government organizations can use the obtained results to formulate their strategies and agendas for improving financial inclusion in Palestine and other developing countries.

Acknowledgment
The author is thankful to Bo Liu and Azzam Hanoon for their comments and suggestions to improve this paper. The author discloses that funding for the writing of this paper comes from the TAAWON research fund.

This study attempts to examine the role of managers in the associated agency theory on dividend policy decisions for firms that do not skip dividend payments. This research sample considered the firms that are listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and pay regular dividends on an annual basis from the financial year 2011 to 2020. Panel data econometric tools and robustness tests were carried out for model validation.
The study results show that there is a higher positive relationship between change in payout ratio and managerial remuneration. Similarly, there is a large positive significance to increase manager incentive for regular payer firms with greater promoter control in higher dividend payout. Thus, this brings an agency theory perspective of rewarding well to managers to increase promoter wealth. Hence, policymakers can contemplate these findings to analyze the nexus between managers and promoters in the dividend policy of firms that never skip their dividend payments.

The acceleration of the global economy’s financialization with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the risks of financial markets volatility, boom and bust cycles, violation of price stability, and debt sustainability. In such conditions, the high degree of Ukraine economy’s external openness, significant amounts of external debt, and lack of domestic investment and credit resources raise the issue of external financial threats to the national economy. This study aims to identify the risks of financialization and debt accumulation across the globe, specify protective arrangements and vulnerabilities of Ukraine’s credit system to external shocks and develop a set of policy actions for global risks mitigation in Ukraine. To achieve this goal, available theoretical sources and policy studies were reviewed, and international databases of financial indicators have been analyzed. As a result, the underdevelopment of the financial system in Ukraine and insufficient use of the credit levers by the private sector are revealed, which impede economic growth but simultaneously mitigate the impact of external shocks in Ukraine’s economy. On the other hand, high external debt reliance is confirmed, which increases the risks of financialization and cross-border capital flows for Ukraine’s economy. A set of financial and organizational measures (targeted at eliminating credit and debt distortions in Ukraine and creating a financial basis for sustainable economic growth) are devised; they refer to development of the national capital market, fiscal policy adjustment, acceleration of the foreign direct investments inflows, shifts in the NBU’s monetary policy, and the management of foreign exchange reserves.

This study examines the association between tax aggressiveness and overconfidence in 277 Brazilian stock market listed companies from 2010 to 2017, with the supposition (based on optimal capital ownership structure theory) that the greater a manager’s overconfidence, the more aggressive the company’s tax decisions. Overconfidence is measured in an innovative way in which normalizing excess acquisitions and excess investments using the company’s market value and then combining these two variables with indebtedness to capture, more directly, the possible effects of overconfidence on the corporation’s operations. Tax aggressiveness is computed using a tax burden on earnings and value-added. The variables included in the model were obtained from data contained in the selected companies’ financial statements. Data analysis was performed by multiple linear regression. The parameters used combined and fixed effects methods to identify an association between tax aggressiveness and overconfidence. Data related to corporate governance, CEO’s characteristics, and capital concentration were used as control variables. The study’s main finding does not show any significant relationship between fiscal aggressiveness and overconfidence; however, they did show a significant association with tax aggressiveness, the company’s size, the return on shares, and the education level of the CEO. An interesting finding of the robustness tests is the stationarity of tax aggressiveness, which could partially explain the non-significance of the main finding.

The biggest challenge facing countries, including India, is creating and managing an LCR (low carbon resilient) economy, which balances the need for high growth rates and is environmentally sustainable. The green bond market provides investors the means to help change the economy into an LCR economy. The study was undertaken to understand the key drivers and the factors influencing the individual retail investor’s decision to invest in green bonds. A survey instrument was designed and administered through the snowball sampling technique to 125 Indian respondents of various age groups who were eligible to invest in the Indian bond market. SPSS software was used to conduct a descriptive analysis followed by regression and conjoint analyses. The study results suggest that the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) rating and credit rating of the green bond issuers are the key factors that influence an individual’s investment decision. The findings also highlight that incentives such as tax exemptions and awareness of green bonds also affect an investor’s decision. This research stands out as one of the first attempts to understand the Indian retail investors’ perception of a green bond.

The extensive use of financial technologies and innovations in the provision and utilization of financial products and services causes new risks that require constant attention. The article aims to improve innovation risk management methods to increase the operational stability of financial institutions in Ukraine. By generalizing international practice, the types of innovation risks are classified, and their impact on the activities of financial institutions and consumers is characterized. The attention is drawn to the control strengthening over the impact of operational and regulatory risks, based on important theoretical provisions contained in WBG, BIS, BCBS, and FSB documents. An organizational scheme for the interaction of a financial institution and an IT company is proposed to conclude “smart contracts” based on the use of a cloud service and blockchain technology. The authors propose additional methods of insurance protection and compensation for losses caused by the implementation of risks of using ICT and innovation based on creating the Collective Risk Insurance Fund of financial institutions; offer approaches to the calculation of variable and fixed parts of the contribution to the insurance fund for certain groups of financial institutions. It is concluded that to maintain the proper operational stability of financial institutions in Ukraine, it is necessary to introduce additional collective compensation methods for the risks of innovation and the strengthening of cyber threats.

Insurance companies are institutions of public trust, and this affects their corporate culture, strategies and management systems. One of the image concerns is reporting on socially responsible actions in non-financial reports. The prime objective of the research presented in this paper is to analyze the dependence between the level of non-financial reporting in the insurance market and the share of foreign capital, measured based on the market size of foreign insurance companies compared to all insurance companies, and the share of foreign insurance companies in non-financial reporting. The study concerned insurance markets in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, and the overall market of the Visegrad Group countries. The theoretical section provides a review of the literature and applicable legislation to indicate the causes of non-financial reporting by insurance companies. Next, the correlation was used to determine the relationship between the variables studied, the regression method was applied to determine the impact of the variables studied, in particular foreign capital, on the level of non-financial reporting. A model was constructed, and the results of its estimation were analyzed. Analysis of the data demonstrated that the greater the share of foreign capital, the higher the level of non-financial reporting. The study results indicate that the share of foreign insurance companies can become a determinant in the development of non-financial reporting.

Disclosure plays an important role for information users. Voluntary disclosure is more meaningful for stakeholders in order to make appropriate decisions. The article researches the impact of firm characteristics on the voluntary disclosure of the top 50 listed firms in Forbes Vietnam (50 listed firms) from 2015 to 2019. It uses the ordinary least squares of time-series data to test the regression model. The signaling and agency theory is used to explain the relationship between firm characteristics on voluntary disclosure. The research results show three variables of firm characteristics that positively impact the voluntary disclosure of 50 listed firms, including firm size, growth rate of market share value to book value, and audit type, in which audit type has the strongest influence. Accordingly, the state agencies of Vietnam should encourage 50 listed firms to improve the Vietnamese listed firms’ voluntary disclosure and meet international economic integration.

Acknowledgment
We would like to thank Assoc. Prof. Ngoc Thach Nguyen (Phd), Assoc. Prof. Hoang Anh Ly (Phd) and Assoc. Prof. Thi Loan Nguyen (PhD), as well as some experts of the State Securities Commission of Vietnam and some leaders of 50 listed firms for their advice and support the project.

The redenomination of the Cedi with the new Ghana Cedi in 2007 was met with skepticism and outright opposition in certain sectors of the economy. Businesses feared that this would decrease their net worth. Despite the time that has elapsed since the redenomination exercise, it is yet to be proven whether the fears of individuals who predicted its negative impact on firms’ performance had been confirmed or the optimism of those that expected its positive impact on firms’ performance has prevailed. Therefore, the study examined the impact of the cedi redenomination on firms’ value growth in Ghana. The study used the financial records of listed firms in Ghana, five years before and five years after the redenomination of the currency. The firms’ value growth was measured based on the growth in Tobin’s Q and return on assets (ROA). A generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation technique was adopted for the regression analysis. The results indicated that the firms’ value increased, whilst profitability decreased in the same year. Moreover, the results showed sustained growth in the profitability of firms after the redenomination exercise. The study concludes that the currency redenomination improved the firms’ profitability, whilst their value was not improved. The significant implication of the results is that governments can use redenomination as a tool to influence micro-economic activities. This study is perhaps the first to use firm-level data to examine the impact of currency redenomination on firms’ value growth in an African country.

Questions regarding the specific factors that drive continuous cash allocations by investors into portfolios of actively managed funds, despite consistent underperformance, continue to remain an inexhaustive aspect of the literature that calls for further investigations. This study assesses the dynamic relationship between fund flow and performance of equity mutual funds in South Africa under different market conditions. The study employs a GMM technique to analyze the panel data of 52 South African equity mutual funds from 2006 to 2019. The analysis found that convexity is prevalent in the flow-performance relationship, where fund contributors in subsequent periods allocate recent underperforming and outperforming funds disproportionate cash. This finding is evident in the lack of significance in the past performance effects on subsequent fund flows. The study found that lagged fund flows, fund size, fund risk, and market risk drive subsequent fund flows under changing conditions of the general market and fund markets. Overall, it is posited that fund contributors and asset administrators adapt to prevailing market dynamics relative to trading decisions. As a result, this affirms the normative guidelines of the Adaptive Markets Hypothesis, leading to the conclusion that exogenous factors drive fluctuations in fund flows in South Africa.

The market efficiency hypothesis has become an important concept for all investors looking to own internationally diversified portfolios, which coincides with an increase in investment flows between all countries, both developed and undeveloped. This study was aimed at investigating the efficiency of a group of Arab stock markets located in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region according to the Random Walk Hypotheses (RWH) at weak form. The study covered the markets of Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, and Oman.
The empirical results of all tests used in this study rejected the RWH at a weak form for all markets through all tests applied – Unit root test, Variance Ratio Test, and Run Test.
The result of this study contradicts the results of many studies conducted on developed and emerging markets. This can be a good indication of the ineffectiveness of the reforms that have been adopted by responsible bodies on these markets.
Based on this result, all efforts made to expand and deepen these markets should be intensified by improving liquidity, transparency, enhancing investment culture in these countries; supporting legislative and regulatory reforms to attract investment, and developing the financial sector in these markets as a whole.

Acknowledgment
This paper is supported by the Deanship of Scientific Research and Graduate Studies at Philadelphia University in Jordan.

The study examined the nexus between the financial ratio and book value of shares for Iraqi money transfer companies. The data used was extracted from the financial reports of selected money transfer companies listed on the Iraq Stock Exchange, and a descriptive, correlation and panel least square regression technique were adopted for the analysis. The result revealed that the financial ratio captured by earnings per share (EPS), return on investment (ROI) and return on assets (ROA) were positively related with the book value of shares (BVAL), while debt ratio (DER) was negatively related with BVAL. Also, EPS, ROA, ROI and DER positively influenced BVAL. Thus, the engagement of competent and qualified personnel to manage the assets and investments in order to ensure optimal returns is urgently required. There is also a need for proper issuing of shares by the management of money transfer companies to ensure free access to the stock market.

Over the years, technological progress has accelerated highly, and the speed, flexibility, human error reduction, and the ability to manage the process in real time have become more critical and required production companies to adapt production and business models according to the needs. The demand for real-time decision support systems adapted to these raising business needs is continuously growing. Nevertheless, businesses usually face challenges in identifying new indicators, data sources, and appropriate financial modeling methods to analyze them. This paper aims to define and summarize the main financial/economic forecasting methods for production companies in the context of Industry 4.0. Main findings show forecasting accuracy of up to 96% when combining economic and demand information, optimal forecasting period from 10 months to five years, more frequent use of soft indicators in forecasting, the relationship between company’s size and production planning. Four groups of indicators used in financial modeling, such as (I) production-related, (II) customers’ and demand-oriented, (III) industry-specific, and (IV) media information indicators, were separated. The analysis forms a suggestion for decision-makers to pay more attention to the forecasting object identification, indicators’ selection peculiarities, data collection possibilities, and the choice of appropriate methods of financial modeling.

Acknowledgment
This work was partly supported by Project No. 0121U100470 “Sustainable development and resource security: from disruptive technologies to digital transformation of Ukrainian economy”.

Although the coronavirus pandemic hit Europe in the early days of 2020, European stock markets had signaled fluctuations in the days before. This paper assesses the observed volatility on European stock exchanges and searches for its sources during the first four months of 2020. To investigate the issue, a panel VAR model is adopted, and the generalized impulse response function and the variance decomposition methods are used. The estimations show that about 34% of the volatility in European stock markets is due to the Chinese stock market, while 7% is due to international uncertainty, as measured by VIX. The impact of pandemic cases and deaths on European stock markets is negligible, below 1%. This means that the European stock market faced two risk elements: the first is the transmission volatility from the Chinese stock market, and the second is the international uncertainty. The findings also support the view that COVID-19 is more like a systematic risk.

This paper proposes an Investor Sentiment Index for the European market and tests its predictability power over returns and volatility. The constructed Investor Sentiment Index for Europe draws upon three well-established and two recent individual sentiment proxies through a novel dynamic factor modeling addressed to behavioral finance. The index is obtained through an extended period of analysis and validated with other sentiment index measures. The work relies on individual sentiment proxies based on a dynamic factor model and tests it using a TGARCH model for volatility and returns. It carries out an in-sample and out-of-sample analysis to examine this sentiment index’s forecasting power over returns sustained on a recursive rolling window prediction against Fama and French’s three-factor model. The findings demonstrate that the proposed index closely predicts STOXX600 variance and returns and confirms a strong spillover effect between European and US stock markets. This study also concludes that the proposed European Sentiment Index is a valid alternative method for investors to monitor and predict market behaviors. The developed sentiment measure is a vital market prediction movement tool for financial information providers, investors, bankers, and financial analysts. The research combines the sentiment index with a TGARCH approach over the extended period of analysis and validates the method with other sentiment index measures. An in-sample and out-of-sample study confirms the predictive power of this work’s sentiment over returns compared to Fama and French’s three-factor model.

Acknowledgment
This work is funded by National Funds through the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., within the scope of the project Refª UIDB/05583/2020. Furthermore, we would like to thank the Research Centre in Digital Services (CISeD) and the Polytechnic of Viseu for their support.

This paper aims to investigate and evaluate the effect of pre- and post-mergers and acquisitions (M&A) on non-financial Egyptian firms’ performance using a balanced scorecard (BSC), as well as to empirically investigate the impact of M&A on shareholder wealth using cumulative abnormal returns (CAR). The paper is limited to non-financial firms listed on the Egyptian stock market (EGX) that have undergone acquisition operations during the time specified in the paper from 2003 to 2016. Four perspectives for the BSC are assessed before and after the acquisition operations to evaluate performance. The final sample for the BSC appraisal is 12 companies for 12 acquisition operations, while the sample for shareholders’ wealth consists of 10 companies. The difference in the sample is that some companies became out-of-counter after the M&A process. Cumulative differential analysis and graph observation show preferable values for post-acquisition operations versus pre-acquisition operations for the three non-financial perspectives, namely Customer satisfaction, Learning and growth, and Internal business process, and for two financial perspectives, namely Sales and Profitability. The results show preferable values for pre-acquisition operations for two financial perspectives: Liquidity and Market value. The T-test results failed to establish a relationship between M&A and enhancing BSC perspectives. The results could not find any evidence to support the impact of pre-post M&A on the shareholders’ wealth. The relationship between BSC before and after M&A and CAR is tested using a multiple regression model. The results show a significant relationship only between shareholder wealth and the Learning and growth perspective.

Proper understanding and monitoring of household savings are crucial to effective macroeconomic policies targeted at balanced and sustainable economic growth. Remittances, as a financial flow of foreign capital, can create a vital part of private savings. This paper is aimed at identifying whether remittances contribute to household savings in the Baltics along with other macroeconomic variables in a post-crisis period, during which the relative smoothing and convergence of economic development of the Baltic countries after the sharp financial distress in 2009 can be observed. The following methods of panel data regression analysis were employed: fixed effects and OLS. The results of the econometric analysis based on both fixed effects and OLS methods reveal that remittances are an essential driver of savings in the Baltics in the long run. Savings in the Baltics are not significantly influenced in the short term by sharp economic fluctuations, but are dependent on demographic factors and foreign capital, which can bring instability in economic development and financial flows of the region.

Acknowledgment
This research was funded by Vega research project no. 1/0037/20: “New challenges and solutions for employment growth in changing socio-economic conditions”, and VEGA research project no. 1/0287/19 “Integration of immigrants in EU countries from the point of view of migration policies”.

East African firms are experiencing economic growth and are attracting foreign investment in the form of equity capital and loans. However, there are concerns about whether the structure of the capital and managerial ownership of these firms can influence their growth. The study examined the relationship between capital structure and firm value in East African countries and how managerial ownership influences this relationship. Sixty-five (65) listed firms in East Africa were selected for the study. The study employed a GMM estimation technique. The evidence showed that leverage has a significantly negative impact on the value of firms in East Africa, suggesting that higher debt would result in a decrease of firm value. The implication of this result is that firms can increase their value by reducing their leverage level. Moreover, the study found that managerial ownership had an inverse and significant impact on the relationship between leverage and firm value. The conclusion is that leverage decreases the value of firms in East Africa. Another conclusion is that owner-managers can use debt capital more effectively to increase firm value than non-owner managers. The implication of this result is that firms managed by owners can borrow more for their operations because it would increase the value of the firms. This study is the first to examine how managerial ownership moderates the relationship between capital structure and the value of firms in East Africa, which has a unique political, social, cultural and economic environment.

Africa has underdeveloped stock markets that have failed to meet the continent’s capital needs, such as rapid economic growth. This research analyzes the key drivers of stock market development in Africa from a macroeconomic perspective. The study examines several macroeconomic variables, including credit to the private sector, foreign direct investment, external reserves, money supply, external trade, per capita GDP, inflation, and lending rate to explain stock market development in Africa. The study builds a panel data consisting of eight African countries from 1994 to 2018 and applies the pooled mean group estimation technique. The analysis shows that in the long run, credit to the private sector, external reserves, and inflation are the most important factors that influence stock market development, while in the short run, income and trade openness are significant in explaining stock market development in Africa. The study recommends that policies to develop African stock markets should center on developing the private sector through access to credit, increased per capita income, and effective foreign reserve management to boost local and foreign investors’ confidence.