Issue #4 (Volume 18 2021)

The market value of a public company reflects the expectations of investors. It is influenced by many factors, both internal and external to the company. This study aims to analyze whether intellectual capital moderates the effect of the debt-to-equity ratio and earnings per share on the market value of equity. A set of historical data was collected and analyzed based on a sample of 114 manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange from 2017 to 2019. This study uses moderated regression analysis to test proposed hypotheses and a robustness test to examine the sensitivity and consistency of the study results. The findings show that the debt to equity ratio affects the market value of equity, whilst earnings per share does not affect the market value of equity. The analysis also shows that intellectual capital could strengthen the effect of the debt to equity ratio on the market value of equity. In contrast, intellectual capital could not strengthen the effect of earnings per share on the market value of equity.

Acknowledgments
The study was conducted with the support of the Universitas Riau, Indonesia.

This study examined the response of stock prices on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) to COVID-19 using an event study approach and the GARCH model. The research sample is the closing price of the Composite Stock Price Index (JCI) and companies that are members of LQ-45 in the 40-day period before the COVID-19 incident, 1 day during the COVID-19 incident (March 2, 2020) and 10 days after, January 6, 2020 – March 16, 2020. Empirical findings prove that abnormal returns react negatively to COVID-19, JCI volatility fluctuates widely during the COVID-19 event, and the GARCH(1,2) model can be used to assess volatility and predict stock abnormal returns in IDX in market conditions infected with COVID-19. The practical implication of the study’s findings for investors is that the COVID-19 event caused stock price volatility, which affects abnormal returns. Therefore, to face the conditions of uncertainty and increased volatility in the future, several lines of risk management are needed in managing a stock portfolio. In addition, it also opens up opportunities for speculators to profit in an inefficient market environment. This study is based on the empirical literature currently being developed to investigate the phenomenon of stock price volatility behavior during COVID-19 on the IDX. The GARCH model used proves that during the COVID-19 pandemic, stock price volatility increases and leads to a decrease in abnormal returns. The empirical findings also validate the efficient market hypothesis theory related to the study of events and the theory of financial behavior related to uncertainty.

The impact of social media usage on corporate performance has not been examined in the Saudi context. This paper aims to investigate the influence of social media, namely companies’ and CEOs’ involvement in Twitter and LinkedIn, on the profitability of Saudi Arabia listed firms. A dynamic panel estimation method is used to empirically assess this relationship. The study employs 120 firms listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange Tadawul from 2014 to 2017. Data are obtained from the companies’ annual reports. Statements of financial status as well as income statements are used to collect data on the dependent variable and control variables. The results show that having a LinkedIn official account by both the CEO and the company does not improve the enterprise performance. In contrast, companies that are active on Twitter will contribute to an increase in their short-term performance. CEOs who engage in Twitter via a high number of followers help to boost the performance of their companies in the long and short term. Hence, this paper recommends that Saudi firms should be aware that their performance could be increased by monitoring their presence on social networks and by having a strong intention to use these tools.

Acknowledgments
This study was funded by the Deanship of Scientific Research at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University through the Fast-track Research Funding Program.

This study aims to investigate the ability of cash flows components to predict the earning and to know the extent of the relationship between accounting profits and cash flow measures. The study sample consisted of 77 industrial companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange in Jordan for the period from 2006 to 2019. This study relied on the regression method to test the relationship between the study variables. The study findings showed that the cash flows from operating, investing, and financial activities have a statistically significant impact on predicting future earnings. The study also examined the effect of length of operating cycle and company’s size on the predictive ability of cash flows regarding future earnings. The main results for this aspect are that large companies and short operating cycle companies have higher prediction ability for future earnings than small and long operating cycle companies. This paper provides evidence of the information content of cash flows for future earnings in emerging markets like Jordan and is important for Jordanian shareholders by enabling them to evaluate company’s performance.

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Amman Arab University for its great support, and for funding this study.

This study examined the asymmetric impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) stock market return volatility. The data included daily closing prices of the GCC stock market from the day of the acknowledgment of the first case of COVID-19 in each country to March 6, 2021. In addition, the study employed generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) family models. According to the Akaike information criterion, GARCH and exponential GARCH (EGARCH) were the most accurate models. The findings of the GARCH model indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic affected the GCC stock markets. The EGARCH model also confirmed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the GCC stock markets, confirming that the COVID-19 negatively affected GCC stock market returns. The value of the persistence of this volatility continued over a long period. This study has potential implications for investors and policymakers in diversifying investment portfolios and adopting strategies to maintain investor confidence during such crises. Moreover, mechanisms must be developed for reducing risks in financial markets in times of crisis, and central banks should take financial measures to mitigate risks to capital markets.

Acknowledgments
This achievement was made with the aid of my family’s support, thank you all.

Conservatism in the CAPM and L-CAPM standards often emphasizes systematic risk to explain the phenomenon of the risk-return relationship and ignores idiosyncratic risk with the assumption that the risk can be diversified. The effect of the Covid-19 outbreak raises the question of whether the idiosyncratic risk can still be ignored considering that the risk has a close relationship to firm-specific risk. This study sets a portfolio consisting of 177 active public firms in the Indonesia Stock Exchange before and after the Covid-19 pandemic. On portfolio set, idiosyncratic risk is estimated by the standard CAPM and L-CAPM in the observation range from January 2, 2019, to June 30, 2021. The results of the analysis show that L-CAPM and CAPM produce significantly different idiosyncratic risks. Empirical evidence shows that the highest firm-specific risk is in the third period and has a stable condition since the fourth period. This condition is confirmed by regression results that idiosyncratic risk together with systematic risk positively affects stock returns in the fourth period as suggested by the efficient market hypothesis. Uniquely, both systematic risk and idiosyncratic risk based on L-CAPM do not show a significant effect on stock returns in the fifth period, so it is a strong indication that liquidity is an important factor that must be considered in making investments.

The lockdown shocks resulting from the global pandemic of COVID-19 in March 2020 brought untold economic imbalance to the financial sector in South Africa. The government’s proactive alternative measure of control to the new wave of COVID-19 must be investigated to offer policy suggestions for future economic and financial planning. Consequently, this study investigated the impact of the new wave of COVID-19 on the financial market with a special interest in the twenty JSE listed companies in South Africa. To enhance the quality in the frequency of study, daily panel data from November 2020 to January 2021 were sourced from S&P Capital IQ and Google online. The impact of COVID-19 was investigated alongside other variables that can influence the return of the stock markets on twenty JSE listed companies. The variables under investigation are daily exchange rate (dollar terms), dividend-adjusted share pricing, daily COVID-19 infection rate. Both robust descriptive and fixed effects time-variant analyses were adopted as the estimating techniques. The study provided empirical evidence that there is a direct but slow link between the daily incidence of infectious COVID-19 and returns on the stock market as key variables. This positive relationship indicates that both COVID-19 and financial activities could co-habit together to enhance greater return on the stock in South Africa. Hence, lockdown may not be most appropriate to the national economy of South Africa.

Behavioral characteristics attributed to consumers of insurance services are a relevant factor for analyzing the current situation in the insurance market and developing effective strategies for insurers’ actions. In turn, considering these characteristics allows the insurer to be more successful in the highly competitive field, achieving mutual satisfaction in interacting with the customer.
This study is aimed to develop cognitive models of the situation (frame) “Insurance”, taking into account the specifics of the Russian insurance market and systemic factors affecting participants’ behavior in the market. In this regard, the study involves systemizing risks at various levels of the economic system, generalizing factors for the motivation of insurance consumers, developing descriptive and economic-mathematical models for the behavior of economic entities in risky situations.
The results obtained represent a behavioral model of interactions among insurance market entities, which determines opportunities for efficient and mutually beneficial coordination of their activities. The developed model includes the following elements: structured individual and institutional frames “Insurance”; a professional index of interest in insurance presented in the form of a mathematical model; methodology for governing the relationships among insurance participants in the digital environment.
The recommendations enable predictions of the situation in the insurance market and allow most accurately defining the consumer needs in the conditions of market changes.

In almost all emerging and developed nations, the insurance industry is one of the most important participants of the financial services sector. As a result, the goal of this study is to investigate the firm characteristics and drivers of financial performance using 121 publicly traded non-life insurance companies from 16 Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries during the period from 2008 to 2019. The consolidated least squares and two-step generalized method of moments estimators were used to analyze a panel data set of 1,452 observations. The findings show that a lagged return on assets, equity capital, operational efficiency, leverage and investment capability are statistically significant determinants of financial performance in non-life insurance companies of SADC countries, even though equity capital, operational efficiency, and leverage are inversely significant. The insurance industry, policymakers, the state, and shareholders should consider these important variables when making decisions, and enhance their performance according to the findings. It is also suggested that the industry’s capital structures should be reformed to preserve a favorable balance of equity and debt amongst the businesses. Additionally, measures such as automated systems that may decrease operating costs should be used to improve financial performance.

This study offers in-depth knowledge of the socio-economic characteristics of funded pension projects. It is based on the financial position of pension market actors during the transition of the pension system to a more funded capitalized scheme, mainly through the option benefit model. This is possible due to the fact that the economy is not viewed as a single earning cohort. The study analytically demonstrates a socio-economic anomaly in the funded pension system, which is in favor of high-earning cohorts at the expense of low-earning cohorts. This anomaly is realized due to lack of insurance and exposure to financial and systemic risks. Furthermore, the anomaly might lead to the pension re-reform back to an unfunded scheme, mainly due to political pressure. A minimum pension guarantee was found to be a rebalance mechanism to this anomaly, which increases the probability of a sustainable pension scheme. Specifically, it is argued that implementing a guarantee with an intra-generational, risk-sharing mechanism is the most effective way to reduce the impact of this abnormality. Moreover, the paper shows the convergence process toward implementing a minimum pension guarantee in many countries that have capitalized their pension systems during the last three decades, in particular in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe.

Numerous studies show that stock markets are often impacted by various calendar anomalies that disrupt the “random walk” behavior of stock prices. These anomalies contradict the Efficient markets theory and can be exploited to generate abnormal returns. This paper investigates the presence of two of them, namely the January effect and the January barometer, on the stock markets of 12 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. The paper examines the statistical significance of differences in returns recorded over the month of January and returns recorded over the other months (the January effect), as well as the statistical significance of differences between returns recorded during the remainder of year after a positive January return and after a negative January return (the January barometer). The results show, among other things, that the statistically significant January effect affects the Estonian, Lithuanian, Czech, Romanian, and Latvian stock markets. On the Romanian and Lithuanian stock markets, statistically significantly higher January returns are accompanied by statistically significantly higher January price volatility. On the other hand, we can speak of a statistically significant January barometer only in the case of the Latvian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian stock markets. The presence of these anomalies is contrary to the Efficient market theory. It can be assumed that proper investment strategies based on these calendar anomalies should be able to generate abnormal returns.

Acknowledgment
This paper is an outcome of the science projects VEGA (1/0613/18) and VEGA (1/0221/21).

This paper aims to explore the interaction between earnings management and audit opinions in the context of Vietnam – an emerging country. For this purpose, two regressions were developed with sample consists of 1,294 firm-years in the period from 2018 to 2020. The first regression model uses Audit Opinion as dependent variable, Discretionary Accruals (DA) as independent variable, and other 8 controlling variables. The results demonstrate that the Discretionary Accruals influence audit opinion, significantly at 0.1 level in the study year. This means the auditor’s probability of issuing modified opinion is positively associated with earnings management and with the attendance of a Big 4 audit companies. Another regression model tests influence of auditor size (measured by Opinion of Auditor) on the interaction between management of earnings and audit opinion (measured by Discretionary Accruals) as independent variable, and other 10 controlling variables. Surprisingly, this model is not statistically significant and this confirms that the appearance of a Big 4 audit companies does not significantly affect the nexus between profit management and audit opinion in the case of Vietnamese listed companies. The results suggest that Big 4 audit firms tend to have higher requirements for the true-and-fair information on the client’s financial statements and often have a tendency to issue modified opinions when the financial statements have material errors, or it is impossible to collect sufficient audit evidence. This finding may enhance the decision-making process of users in various circumstances.

Acknowledgments
This paper is funded by the National Economics University (NEU), Vietnam. The authors thank anonymous reviewers for their contributions and the NEU for supporting this study.

This paper explores price effects in the “passion investments” market after days with abnormal returns. To do this, daily prices for stamps and diamonds over the periods 1999–2021 and 1989–2021 are analyzed. The following hypothesis is tested: One-day abnormal returns create stable patterns in price behavior on the next day. Statistic tests (t-test, ANOVA, Mann–Whitney U test, modified cumulative abnormal returns approach, regression analysis with dummy variables) confirm the presence of price patterns related to extreme returns: price fluctuations on the day after extreme returns are higher than returns on “normal” days. On the days after positive abnormal returns, the momentum effect is detected. Contrarian effect is typical for the days after negative abnormal returns. A trading strategy based on detected price effects showed the presence of exploitable profit opportunities. Results of this paper provide additional pieces of evidence in favor of inconsistencies between the efficient market hypothesis and practice and can be used by traders to generate extra profits in the “passion investments” market.

Acknowledgment
The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (0121U100473).

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated some structural changes in the healthcare industry, and several health-tech start-ups thrived by providing innovative solutions to the challenges imposed by the pandemic. To finance their growth, many of these companies went through mergers with Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs). The paper investigates the market performance of healthcare-focused US-listed SPACs. The study aims to analyze the returns that healthcare SPACs offer to their investors and ascertain the determinants that drive these returns over a sample of 33 SPACs that merged with a healthcare firm between 2018 and 2021. Linear regression is employed to identify the drivers of SPACs’ market performance. Portfolio analysis is also performed and compared against the Russell 2000 and the S&P500 Healthcare Indexes.
The first outcome accomplished by the analysis is that a portfolio made of healthcare-SPACs underperforms small-cap firms by 2.14% and the healthcare industry by 6.72% over a two-year period, even if the difference in the returns of the healthcare SPACs portfolio and the two benchmarks is not statistically significant. Moreover, a high level of redemptions, the presence of serial SPAC sponsors, cross-border deals, private equity and venture capital funds as sellers, and a high percentage of boutique investment banks among the sell-side advisors seem to negatively affect the returns of healthcare-focused SPACs with a significance level of at least 10%. Instead, a larger number of buy-side advisors appears to be beneficial for healthcare-focused SPACs’ market performance.

This study aims to analyze the essential corporate governance determinants of related party transactions (RPTs) in Indonesia. Based on a hand-collected sample of three business groups of small, medium, and large-cap publicly listed firms on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) for 2013–2019, panel regression results find that foreign shareholders and firm size have a significant effect, at –2.402 and 0.248, respectively. The moderating model of audit quality shows that domestic shareholders, foreign shareholders, and firm size are significantly negatively associated, with –5.627 and –5.958 at 5%, respectively. Similar results show that foreign shareholders and independent commissioners significantly negatively affect related party transactions at –2.864 and –1.845, moderating the firm size at 10% and 5%, respectively. The moderation of regression results also indicates that audit quality and firm size tend to strengthen negative effects on the association between related party transactions and corporate governance. The moderation interaction confirms that audit quality will determine that domestic and foreign shareholders tend to increase the number of affiliate transactions. The interaction of complete information quality will force domestic and foreign shareholders to increase the role of affiliate transactions in creating firm value. The larger size of the firm, which is owned by foreign shareholders, will increase the intensity of cross-border related party transactions through the combined effects in the context of internationalization with a tendency of expropriation and transfer pricing practices, which can reduce government tax incomes.

Acknowledgment
We are grateful to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology, Indonesia, for research grant No. 163/E4.1/AK.04.PT/2021, as well as the editor of the Investment Management and Financial Innovations journal, peer reviewers, and some colleagues for their suggestions, criticism and comments that significantly improved this paper.

The cost of debt is a key element to define the amount of the regular interest payments of a company and its business value. It is used for indicators that warn of the economic crisis, which is relevant for the countries where most companies are financially dependent on liabilities. The formalized criteria for the types of financing policy, improved procedure for the cost of debt calculation make it possible to reveal policy with the capital structure that minimizes the cost of debt.
The study is based on Ukrainian food processing companies for the period 2013–2020. The studied database was distributed by the types of financing policies: 22% of the cases have a conservative policy, 15% – moderate, 26% – aggressive, 37% – super-aggressive.
The results show that the highest weighted cost of debt (24.1%) belongs to the conservative policy, which replaces negative equity by the expensive long-term debts, as well as super-aggressive policy (20.8%) with trade payable that is near half of the capital, and long days payable outstanding. A company can reduce the cost of debt relying on non-interest-bearing liabilities and trade payable if its days payable outstanding are kept at the industrial level or below. Moderate and conservative financing policies, which are based on equity and avoid debts, provide the lowest weighted cost of debt: 2.1% and 1.2%.
Thus, choosing the desired type of financing policy for the company, it is possible to form a capital structure that will reduce the cost of debt.

Standard finance theory suggests that idiosyncratic volatility should not influence stock returns. In reality, if investors are unable to achieve efficient diversification, such risk may affect stock returns. The purpose of the study is to examine the presence of idiosyncratic volatility and sentiment in the stock markets of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries.
Monthly idiosyncratic volatility is estimated using the Fama-French three-factor model. A unified sentiment proxy for each market is created by employing Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Then, Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regressions are applied. F-statistics, t-statistics, and adjusted R2s are used to test the presence of idiosyncratic volatility and sentiment in the GCC markets.
Findings show that the effect of sentiment on stock returns is observed across all the GCC markets. Investor sentiment can weakly explain the effect of idiosyncratic volatility on stock returns. In general, investors do not price expected idiosyncratic volatility, and only the unexpected part of it affects stock returns.
Overall, the first implication for investors is that they must consider market sentiment to predict the cross-section of stock prices and should not completely ignore the influence of idiosyncratic volatility on stocks. Secondly, the implication for policymakers is that they should motivate companies to go public so that investors have more options to diversify their portfolios across different sectors.

The intrinsic property of modern economic development is financial deepening in the light of incremental spearheading financial innovation opportunities. The paper deals with the relationship between financial depth, financial innovation, and economic growth among 22 OECD economies over 2007–2018 by applying pooled OLS and fixed effect panel data regression analysis. The purpose of the paper is to empirically test whether the economic growth depends on financial depth, financial innovation, and institutional environment (Worldwide Governance Indicators). The findings shed light on the recent discussion on the pros and cons of financial innovation. The estimation results show that while financial depth is a strong predictor of economic growth across high- and upper-middle-income economies, financial innovation is a slightly weaker predictor. Despite the identified positive impact of financial innovation on economic growth, it is asserted that the negative effect of financial depth may indicate oversaturated financial market in developed countries. Сonsistent with the general notion that the institutional framework promotes the capacity of the financial sector for financial innovations implementation, this paper states that financial depth and financial innovations are better prerequisites of economic growth than institutional development.

Acknowledgment
The paper was funded as a part of the “Relationship between financial depth and economic growth in Ukraine” research project (No. 0121U110766), conducted in the State Institution “Institute for Economics and Forecasting of the NAS of Ukraine”.

In times of exogenous systemic shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to identify hedge or safe haven assets. Therefore, this paper analyzes changes in the idiosyncratic risk of Bitcoin in a portfolio of commodities and global stocks. For this purpose, the M-GARCH model employed considers the interdependence among all the portfolio assets by using a time-varying asset pricing framework. This framework measures the impact of commodities and global stock prices as sources of systemic risk for Bitcoin returns before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The evidence suggests that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects of changes in commodities and global prices on the idiosyncratic risk of Bitcoin were statistically significant. The idiosyncratic risk of Bitcoin measured as a percentage of total variance not accounted for by the proposed model rose from 86.06% to 95.05% during the pandemic. These results are in line with previous studies regarding the properties of Bitcoin as a hedge or safe haven asset for a portfolio composed of commodities and global stocks.

Viewing the development of the stock market in Ukraine, the economy, which world financial organizations characterize as small and open, is largely determined by the trends formed by the global stock markets and leading stock exchanges. Therefore, the study aims to analyze Ukraine’s stock market, the world stock market, stock markets in the regions, and to assess their mutual influence. The study uses the data of the World Federation of Exchanges and National Securities and Stock Market Commission (Ukraine) from 2015 to 2020. Stock market performance forecasts are built using triple exponential smoothing. Based on pairwise correlation coefficients, the existence of a significant dependence in the development of the world stock market on the development of the American stock market was determined. Regarding the Ukrainian stock exchanges, only SE “PFTS” demonstrated its dependence on the US stock market. The results of the regression model based on an exponentially smoothed series of trading volumes in all markets showed that variations in the volume of trading on the world stock market are due to the situation on the US stock markets. Trading volume dynamics on Ukrainian stock exchanges such as SE “PFTS” and SE “Perspektiva” is almost 50% determined by the development of stock markets in the American region. Although Ukraine is geographically located in Europe, the results show a lack of significant links and the impacts of stock markets in this region on the major Ukrainian stock exchanges and the stock market as a whole.

The Capital Asset Pricing Model (henceforth, CAPM) is considered an extensively used technique to approximate asset pricing in the field of finance. The CAPM holds the power to explicate stock movements by means of its sole factor that is beta co-efficient. This study focuses on the application of rolling regression and cross-sectional regression techniques on Indian BSE 30 stocks. The study examines the risk-return analysis by using this modern technique. The applicability of these techniques is being viewed in changing business environments. These techniques help to find the effect of selected variables on average stock returns. A rolling regression study rolls the data for changing the windows for every 3-month period for three years. The study modifies the model with and without intercept values. This has been applied to the monthly prices of 30 BSE stocks. The study period is from January 2009 to December 2018. The study revealed that beta is a good predictor for analyzing stock returns, but not the intercept values in the developed model. On the other hand, applying cross-section regression accepts the null hypothesis. α, β, β2 ≠ 0. Therefore, a researcher is faced with the task of finding limitations of each methodology and bringing the best output in the model.

Despite market volatility in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a decline in global investment flows to 2005 levels, sustainable development funds continued to grow. These data indicate a change in development vectors: now leading investors are guided by technologies for sustainable growth. The purpose of this paper is to determine the optimal model for evaluating investment projects in terms of their economic and environmental effects on the development of the region. The proposed technique is being tested for an investment project aimed at developing the production of mobile phones in Europe. As shown, the analysis of the location of the production of smartphones in Europe for subsequent implementation in the European market has a number of advantages and is more beneficial in terms of environmental and economic effects for the region. First, from an economic point of view, this leads to an increase in the volume of attracted investments, a decrease in operating costs for international logistics, the creation of new jobs and qualifications for the population. In addition, it is important to be able to actively implement circular business models that will reuse lithium-ion phone batteries, which will lead to a decrease in the need for cobalt as a raw material, as well as lead to an increase in the level of recycling of e-waste and the circularity of the European economy. Also, such investment projects open up great opportunities for manufacturers from a marketing point of view, creating bonuses for a positive image and preferences for a “local green producer”.

This paper examines the impact of family ownership, management, and generations on IPO underpricing and the long-run performance of publicly listed firms in Indonesia from 2004 to 2015. This study is based on agency theory, which discusses the relationship between shareholders and management, as well as controlling and non-controlling shareholders. Study results show that IPO underpricing was 28% higher for family firms than non-family firms. Among family firms, a family member’s presence as a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) significantly reduced the level of IPO underpricing. A negative relationship between family CEO and IPO underpricing was only observed if a CEO at the time of IPO was the founder instead of family descendants. A long-run return of family-firm IPOs was more likely to underperform their non-family-firm counterparts. The findings in the primary market suggest that investors predict bigger issues of agency conflicts between controlling and non-controlling shareholders in family firms than the issues of agency conflicts between shareholders and management in non-family firms. Since investors consider family-firm IPOs to be riskier than non-family firms, they demand a higher level of IPO underpricing to compensate for such risks. The results in the secondary market confirm the findings in the primary market.

Different models have been used in the finance literature to predict the stock market returns. However, it remains an open question whether non-linear models can outperform linear models while providing accurate predictions for future returns. This study examines the prediction of the non-linear artificial neural network (ANN) models against the baseline linear regression models. This study aims specifically to compare the prediction performance of regression models with different specifications and static and dynamic ANN models. Thus, the analysis was conducted on a growing market, namely the Amman Stock Exchange. The results show that the trading volume and interest rates on loans tend to explain the monthly returns the most, compared to other predictors in the regressions. Moreover, incorporating more variables is not found to help in explaining the fluctuations in the stock market returns. More importantly, using the root mean square error (RMSE), as well as the mean absolute error statistical measures, the static ANN becomes the most preferred model for forecasting. The associated forecasting errors from these metrics become equal to 0.0021 and 0.0005, respectively. Lastly, the analysis conducted with the dynamic ANN model produced the highest RMSE value of 0.0067 since November 2018 following the amendment to the Jordanian income tax law. The same observation is also seen since the emerging of the COVID-19 outbreak (RMSE = 0.0042).

The purpose of this study is to examine whether investor sentiment as measured by technical analysis indicators has an impact on stock returns. The research period is from 2015 to mid-2020. 1-year government bond yields, financial data, transaction data of 57 companies in the VN100 basket, and VNIndex are analyzed. The investor sentiment variable is measured by each technical analysis indicator (Relative Strength Index – RSI, Psychological Line Index – PLI), and the general sentiment variable is established based on extracting the principal component from individual indicators. The paper uses two regression methods – Fama-MacBeth and Generalized Least Square (GLS) – for five different research models. The results show that sentiment plays an important role in stock returns in the Vietnamese stock market. Even controlling the factors such as cash flow per share, firm size, market risk premium, and stock price volatility in the studied models, the impact of sentiment is significant in both the model using individual technical indicators and the model using the general sentiment variable. Furthermore, investor sentiment has a stronger power to explain excess stock returns than their trading behavior. The implication from the results shows that the Vietnamese stock market is inefficient, in which psychology is a very important issue and participants need to pay due attention to this factor.

Acknowledgment
This study was funded by the Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City (IUH), Vietnam (grant number: 21/1TCNH03).

This paper examines the difference that the assurance brings to the quality of CSR reports in the Chinese institutional setting, in particular, the difference in quality (proxy – RKS ranking) of assured and unassured CSR reports, as well as whether the high ownership concentration and corresponding to it “entrenchment effect” obstruct the positive impact the assurance exerts on the quality of CSR reports. The paper examines CSR reports on 2,292 firm-year observations of large Chinese companies over three years (2015–2018). The hypothesis development process predicates on the signaling and stakeholder theories, whilst this study applies regression analysis to test the hypotheses.
Consistent with the predictions of signaling and stakeholder theories, the paper finds that assurance contributes to the higher quality of CSR reports. Moreover, the study finds that assured CSR reports have higher sub-scores in all four aspects of RKS ranking. However, as ownership concentration exceeds 50 per cent and reaches the majority, it thwarts the advancement in the quality of CSR reports through its assurance.
The paper provides an initial empirical account of the role of assurance in the emerging CSR reporting practice in China. The paper contributes to the modest body of empirical research on the function of external assurance in the CSR area by explicating the role played both by the accounting (external assurance) and corporate governance (ownership concentration) infrastructure to ensure high quality of CSR reporting. The paper briefs local, international regulatory authorities and the business community about the importance of external assurance for the CSR reporting quality.

The objective of this study is to investigate the performance persistence of Turkish mutual and pension funds. 310 mutual and 259 pension funds were analyzed between the period of 2010–2019 in order to determine if there is an evidence of performance persistence. In this study, a persistence rate is developed, and the skill ratio is used to crosscheck the results of the persistence rate. Furthermore, six different risk-adjusted return measures, such as Sharpe, Treynor, Information, Jensen’s alpha, Sortino, and Omega ratios are calculated to analyze whether funds also exhibit superior risk-adjusted returns. The results indicate that only 2% of funds demonstrate persistence above 50%, and 15 out of 20 fund categories do not have any funds that show persistence in 10 years. Most of the persistent funds have positive skill ratios, and it is observed that the persistence rate is effective. However, it cannot be stated that there is performance persistence in the Turkish fund management industry, since performance persistence is not evident for various fund types, so investors do not need to invest in the best funds of the previous year. Additionally, the empirical results associated with risk-adjusted performance analysis indicate that persistent funds also do not generally yield higher risk-adjusted returns. The lack of persistence in funds’ performance is a significant result for investors in their investment decisions, for fund managers in their human resource policies and bonus schemes, and for regulators in their policy decisions.

In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, university funding in Ukraine suffered significant losses due to unprecedented quarantine measures. The challenge for universities is to diversify funding sources, develop effective approaches to minimize existing and prevent future threats to ensure their financial stabilization (sustainability) in the post-pandemic period. The paper aims to consider financial sustainability of a university (the case of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv) due to COVID-19 using the objective calculative approach on the statistical sample of data for 2011–2020. The tasks for achieving the aim are seen in determining, using regression methods, the number of lost receipts from general and special funds in the short and medium term, which will maintain a constant value of receipts at constant assets. The main idea of the paper is that financial sustainability is considered as a condition, and stabilization is considered as a process towards stability/sustainability.
The modeling approach reveals a fragile list of factors for the future preventing measures of the University to sustain. It is estimated that the University’s top management should consider financial strategy in dollar terms only. The challenge is that funding in hryvnia seems to be quite increasing and linear, but indeed, funding of the University is non-linear and has a quite intensive downward trend. Thus, for the financial sustainability strategy, this fact should be crucial.
The results indicate the need for a significant increase in university funding to mitigate the impact of macroeconomic instability due to various crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

Acknowledgment
The study is carried out under the grant funded from the National Research Fund of Ukraine within the competition Science for Human Security and Society, topic 2020.01/0265.

This study aims to analyze financial well-being as well as the factors affecting the financial well-being of Vietnamese students. The study surveyed 658 students in Vietnam via email and Facebook groups with suitable survey subjects in the period from May to June, 2021. The study also collected demographic information and the status of independence or financial dependence of students participating in the survey in Vietnam. The study analyzes the direct and indirect effects of six groups of independent factors on the financial well-being of Vietnamese students through the PLS-SEM model. Empirical study results show that three factors, such as Financial Attitude, Financial Behavior, and Financial Self-Efficacy, have a direct impact, while two other factors, Financial Knowledge and Financial Skills, have an indirect impact on financial well-being of students in Vietnam. Although there are some limitations in the representative level of students participating in the survey, sampling methods and the number of respondents in the survey, the study achieved its research objectives. This study provides more empirical evidence and insights to the Ministry of Education and Training and economics universities in designing training programs that equip students with knowledge and skills to achieve financial well-being.

Acknowledgment
The author wishes to acknowledge support from the Banking University of Ho Chi Minh City. The author would like to thank all the lecturers and students for their support in sharing the survey, and the students who completed the survey. This study was made possible thanks to all valuable support from relevant stakeholders.

This paper investigates the effect of the Brexit vote on the connection between UK stock market expectations and US stock market returns. To gauge UK stock market expectations, the option-implied volatilities of the FTSE 100 index are calculated in the period starting five months before and ending four months after the Brexit referendum. To keep the analysis “clean”, it stops right before the 2016 US presidential elections. It uses an OLS regression to estimate the change in the relationship between US and UK stock market expectations.
The main findings show that the US and UK stock markets became somewhat less integrated four months after the Brexit referendum compared to the five months before it. The S&P 500 Index returns have a statistically significant impact on implied volatilities of the FTSE 100 only before the Brexit referendum. However, the British risk-free rate (LIBOR) became a statistically significant factor affecting FTSE 100 implied volatilities only after Brexit. This analysis may be used by decision-makers in the money management industry to act appropriately during Black Swan events. When UK citizens unexpectedly voted in favor of Brexit, the risk-free rate dropped, making it cheaper to invest, increasing the Sharpe ratios of equity portfolios. Coupled with increased uncertainty, this caused portfolio reallocations. In turn, expected volatility measured by options-implied volatility increased.

Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank Olesia Verchenko for critique, a KSE M.A., external defense reviewer for helpful comments.

Despite a large number of government subsidies, Chinese listed companies still face numerous challenges. This requires research into the effects of government subsidies on corporate investment efficiency. The paper provides empirical evidence to investigate investment efficiency and enriches the study on the interactions between government intervention, rent-seeking, and ownership structure. Generalized least square (GLS) models with fixed effects were constructed using 2012–2020 data from 869 Chinese listed A-share non-financial firms. Results show that government subsidies received by listed companies significantly damage investment efficiency (β = .138, p < .01). This can be attributed to their rent-seeking behaviors to obtain subsidies, which also significantly harms investment efficiency (β = .915, p < .05). Government subsidies are also found to significantly mediate the impact of rent-seeking on investment efficiency. In three-step regression for testing mediating effect, coefficients are 0.475, 0.915, and 0.131 at the level of 1%, 5%, and 5%, respectively. Furthermore, ownership structure shows a moderating effect in the relationship between subsidies and investment efficiency. The management shareholding ratio significantly reinforces the negative impact (β = 1.369, p < .01), while the institutional shareholding ratio shows no significant moderating effect (β = 0.0571, p = n.s). Non-state-owned enterprises show a more significant negative impact (β = 0.17, p < .05) than state-owned enterprises (β = 0.148, p < .1). Finally, the study tests the above relationships for companies in the manufacturing industry that receive the most percentage of government subsidies in China, and the results are robust.