Issue #1 (Volume 19 2022)

The health sector in Morocco is marked by many achievements, but also by large deficits, especially in terms of healthcare expenditures borne by individuals. With the introduction of Islamic banks (called participative banks) in Morocco, the study aims to determine the extent to which Ijara Forward, as an Islamic financial contract, is adapted to the expectations of Moroccans to finance their health expenditures.
The study sample consisted of 200 individuals. The univariate and bivariate analyses are used to identify possible relationships between the study variables. In addition, this paper proposes a model that will predict the demand for Ijara Forward based on the logistic regression method.
The results reveal that the financial characteristics of the Ijara Forward contract are in line with the financial expectations of Moroccan individuals. Furthermore, the cost of health services is the main factor that makes healthcare inaccessible. This factor influences the demand of Ijara Forward. In addition, this paper reveals that religious beliefs stimulate Ijara Forward’s demand and encourages people to pay a higher price for Ijara Forward.

Tracking error is a ubiquitous tool among active and passive portfolio managers, widely used for fund selection, risk management, and manager compensation. This paper shows that traditional measures of the tracking error are incapable of detecting variations in skewness and kurtosis. As a solution, this paper introduces a new class of Quantile Tracking Errors (QuTE), which measures differences in the quantiles of return distributions between a tracking portfolio and its benchmark. Through an extensive simulation study, this paper shows that QuTE is six times more sensitive than traditional tracking measures to skewness and three times more sensitive to kurtosis. The QuTE statistic is robust to various calibrations and can easily be customized. By using the QuTE tracking measure during the Dot Com bubble and the Great Recession, this paper finds differences between the DIA and its benchmark, the DJIA, that otherwise would have gone undetected. Quantile based tracking provides a robust method for relative performance measurement and index portfolio construction.

The current pandemic situation in the global economy has urged the need to revolutionize the financial services industry with a keen eye on consumers’ financial needs for sound financial decisions, which is necessary for financial well-being. The purpose of the study is to assess the financial well-being of Indian Gen Z students in relation to financial literacy, financial fragility, financial behavior, and financial technology. In addition, the study also tries to determine how Gen Z students’ financial well-being is influenced by other factors such as gender, age, parental education, employment status, and monthly income in India. The study uses the scientific data analysis approach, Partial Least Squares-SEM model to estimate, predict, and assess the hypotheses. A sample of 271 University students from India was surveyed using a self-administered structured questionnaire. Questions were incorporated to understand the effect of financial literacy, technology, fragility, behavior, demographic and parental characteristics on financial well-being. The results indicate that financial behavior is positively related to financial well-being, while financial fragility is negatively associated. However, financial literacy and financial technology do not significantly affect financial well-being. The results also show that financial well-being is significantly influenced by gender, parental education, employment status, and monthly income change. Understanding Indian Gen Z student financial well-being will expand the students’ understanding of the importance of financial literacy for well-planned financial behavior and informed decisions, hence high levels of financial well-being. Government and financial institutions can more effectively identify gaps and deficiencies in student financial well-being.

Value-at-risk (VaR) is the most common and widely used risk measure that enterprises, particularly major banking corporations and investment bank firms employ in their risk mitigation processes. The purpose of this study is to investigate the value-at-risk (VaR) estimation models and their predictive performance by applying a series of backtesting methods on BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and US stock market indices. The study employs three different VaR estimation models, namely normal (N), historical (HS), exponential weighted moving average (EMWA) procedures, and eight backtesting models. The empirical analysis is conducted during three different periods: overall period (2006–2021), global financial crisis (GFC) period (2008–2009), and COVID-19 period (2020–2021). The results show that the EMWA model performs better compared to N and HS estimation models for all the six stock market indices during overall and crisis sample periods. The results found that VaR models perform poorly during crisis periods like GFC and COVID-19 compared to the overall sample period. Furthermore, the study result shows that the predictive accuracy of VaR methods is weak during the COVID-19 era when compared to the GFC period.

The study explores the underpinning interlinkages in the spot and futures markets across nine Asian advanced and emerging economies, and examines whether development status has any impact on the nature and speed of adjustments in the information transmission. By applying Panel VECM to the data set from the very day futures trading was initiated on the respective exchange till February 2020, the results highlight that in the long run, over the entire period, the futures market adjusts 69.7% more than the spot market and there is a bidirectional causality in the short run. Even in the sub-periods, the same phenomena were observed, and in the short run, there was a unidirectional causality from futures to spot during the crisis period. An identical trend was observed for country groups in three sub-periods. However, in the short run, during the crisis period, a unidirectional causality from futures to spot was found in advanced economies, while the opposite pattern was found in emerging economies. The paper establishes that the spot market dominates the information dissemination process. The results also demonstrate that traders prefer liquidity over leverage as their trading venue, the existence of potential index arbitrage opportunities, and validate that development status has no impact on the information transmission pattern amongst the markets, except during turbulent times. The study offers insights to market participants to develop their specific trading strategies in these markets at various economic stages, thereby increasing their expected returns.

Due to the lack of studies in the financial literature on indicators of corruption and political instability relative to investment, this paper is considered one of the first studies that examines the impact of two-corruption indicators and political instability on investment in Jordan over the period 1987–2020. Using Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) based on annual data, the corruption effect as measured by the corruption score index is a negative and statistically significant impact on investment in Jordan. The second measure of corruption, which is the corruption rank index, confirmed the previous result that corruption has a negative and statistically significant effect. Political instability measured in this study as a dummy variable by wars in the region has a positive and statistically significant effect on investment. For macroeconomic variables, the results show that current government expenditure and interest rate have a negative and significant impact on investment in Jordan. The interest rate factor was the highest coefficient among the negative effects. The study also shows that the investment in Jordan is positively and significantly affected by growth domestic product, imports and local revenue. The gross domestic product showed the highest coefficient among the positive effects. This study concludes that policy makers attempt to apply transparency and minimize the corruption through flexibility, facilitation of procedures and reduced transactions using automation. The study also concludes that decision makers should rationalize current government expenditure and direct banks in Jordan to give greater priority to credit facilities for productive sectors.

The move to sustainable development and building a carbon-low economy needs funding. In this regard, a new direction in finance – green (sustainable) finance – has emerged. One of the green finance instruments is green bonds, first issued by supranational financial institutions. This paper aims to identify the features of green bond issues and implemented green projects by the World Bank (the WB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the EBRD). Data were obtained from databases and reports of the WB, the EBRD, and the Climate Bonds Initiative. Data analysis was provided using statistical methods, particularly descriptive and comparative statistics. A positive trend in the issue of green bonds in the volumes and timing of the WB and the EBRD was revealed, despite the shift in emphasis caused by COVID-19. Renewable energy, energy efficiency, and clean transportation remain the primary directions of the WB, and the EBRD green projects amounted to more than 60% of total projects funding. The geography of green projects financed through the WB and the EBRD green bonds indicates that green projects are receiving significant funding from countries facing environmental challenges and demonstrating intent to green transition (the WB – China and India, the EBRD – Turkey, Poland, and Egypt). Supranational financial institutions were the first to come to the forefront of sustainable development funding and are now spearheading the creation of new financial instruments aimed at financing both green and social projects, leading to the emergence of sustainability bonds.

Acknowledgment(s)
The authors would like to thank the participants of the 1st International Conference on Sustainable Development (SDL 2021) for providing the valuable remarks and a fruitful discussion. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

In recent years, although the total funding for higher education by the Chinese government has been increasing year by year, there are still some problems, such as the unreasonable allocation of regional resources and poor funding efficiency. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the performance management and analyze government funding in higher education (GFHE). Based on the data envelopment analysis (DEA) model, this paper evaluates the performance of GFHE in 29 provinces in eastern, central, and western areas of China. An empirical analysis is conducted on the influencing factors using the panel Tobit regression model. The results show that from 2008 to 2020, GFHE performance in China is generally high, but offers a “W-shaped” fluctuation rising state. There are significant differences in the performance of different areas, and the scale level of GFHE in the three areas is not wholly consistent with the performance level. In further studies, the performance level of the 29 provinces is divided into three degrees, which are distributed in all three areas. The study also found that the influencing factors of GFHE performance in central, eastern, and western China are also different, and analyzed the positive and negative effects of influencing factors in each area. Finally, the study tests the theoretical hypothesis, and the results are robust.

The 2016 Brexit referendum created potential turmoil in financial markets. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the Brexit referendum on the return and volatility spillover between the EU, the UK, and the USA stock markets and the Indian stock market during the pre- and post-Brexit referendum period. The VAR and bivariate GARCH BEKK models were employed. The study results suggest that before the Brexit referendum, Indian stock market returns made no significant return spillover on the other markets. On the contrary, following the referendum, Indian stock returns significantly spilled over to France, Germany, the UK, and the USA stock market returns. The study results also identified a substantial increase in the bidirectional volatility spillover between India-France, India-UK, and India-USA during the post-Brexit referendum period. Therefore, the investors’ opportunity to invest simultaneously in India, UK, EU, and US stock markets for portfolio diversification is limited. India was affected mainly by its own past shocks before the Brexit referendum. However, after the Brexit referendum, Indian markets are getting more and more integrated with other markets. In order to reap the diversification benefits, a prudent investment strategy will need to be developed in the future, especially during times of economic and political uncertainty and market crisis.

In instability and economic turbulence, the wellbeing of households as market economy entities constitutes the financial-investment capacity of a region, the level of which is determined by the conditions of the competitive socio-economic environment. The paper aims to estimate the financial wellbeing of households on the example of the oblasts of the Carpathian region of Ukraine in instability. The study is based on a system-integral estimation method, which includes the implementation of three stages: (1) development of a system of indicators, (2) determination and substantiation of weight significance, and (3) construction of time series of empirical parameters of households’ wellbeing based on temporal and spatial approaches. The analysis reveals that the financial wellbeing of households differentiates in a competitive economic environment and with the spread of behavioral factors (COVID-19, consumer reflections). Among the oblasts of the Carpathian region of Ukraine, the highest values of empirical parameters of financial wellbeing were in Zakarpatska (0.537) and Chernivetska (0.459) oblasts (2019). Meanwhile, the level of the financial wellbeing of households is higher in Lvivska oblast by several indicators. The divergence of the Carpathian region from Ukraine by the level of the financial wellbeing of households was mostly observed in 2018–2019. Zakarpatska oblast was the leader by the level of the financial wellbeing of households in 2010–2019. The study is of the practical nature for framing the regional economic policy in terms of detecting the critical “pressure” of financial wellbeing on the economic growth of the region and economic ability to increase investment capacity.

Acknowledgments
The study has been conducted within the framework of the Applied Research “Financial determinants of the provision of economic growth in the regions and territorial communities based on behavioural economy” with the support of the National Research Foundation of Ukraine (M. Dolishniy Institute of Regional Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the grant Reg. No. 2020.02/0215, 2020–2022).

The study aims to measure the influence of financial information systems (FIS) on competitive advantage in organizations listed on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE). To achieve the objectives of the study, a quantitative approach is used. The study sample adopted in this study is a self-administered questionnaire handled by a study sample of 66 financial managers, internal auditors, information systems managers, and heads of departments in organizations listed on the ASE, categorized by the following competitive advantage variables, including service efficiency, cost flexibility, learning organization, and service variety. The results of the study accept the main hypothesis stating that financial information systems can increase competitive advantage within organizations. In addition, the results show that the service efficiency and learning organization variables have a positive and strong relationship with FIS and are highly influenced by it on the one hand. On the other hand, service variety has a medium relationship, while cost flexibility has a weak and positive relationship. The study recommends focusing on training programs that support employees’ skills in using the financial information systems in all their forms, in line with continuing technological developments and activating creativity in the organization in all its forms to achieve competitive advantage.

The poor performance of female entrepreneurs, exemplified in their inability to realize their full potential and compete fairly with their male counterparts owing to financial illiteracy, motivated this study. Therefore, this study examined the effect of financial literacy on business performance among female micro-entrepreneurs. Using the survey research design, data were collected from 247 female entrepreneurs from six states in the North-Eastern region of Nigeria. The hypotheses developed for the study were tested using path modeling-structural equation modeling with the aid of SmartPLS software version 3.2.7. The result revealed that all proxies of financial literacy (financial education, cash forecasting, and bookkeeping have significant effects on business performance of female entrepreneurs. Additionally, the paper revealed that financial education contributed more to the variance in business performance of the female micro-entrepreneurs, this was followed by bookkeeping practices, while cash-forecasting has the least effect on the variance in business performance. This implies that financial education is essential for the success of female micro-entrepreneurs. Thus, this study advocates the need for continuing trainings and workshops for female micro-entrepreneurs on financial concepts such as bookkeeping, cash forecasting, and market volatilities.

Cryptocurrencies show tremendous growth by market capitalization, however Bitcoin cross-country holdings are still in question. The purpose of the paper is to show that inflation discontent with the rule of law failures can explain why residents of different countries are prone to cryptocurrency holdings. The level of financial development is also considered. A hypothesis is proposed for more complex and segmented motives of Bitcoin holdings, tested by the OLS method. Single- and multi-factor regressions with independent variables are used, which can validate cross-country Bitcoin holdings in terms of inflation discontent, quality of institutions and financial development. Regression results confirm the idea of more segmented motives to hold Bitcoins. First, the hedge against inflation motive is rooted in the institutional weakness of central banks, and the regression results show that inflation variables are the most significant. Second, the hedge against institutional risks of asset ownership motive, based on the lack of rule of law and the relevant variable, is best performing among other institutional variables. Third, it is wrong to neglect financial development. However, it only plays a role in interaction with better innovation performance, meaning that crypto investors try not only to diversify their portfolios, but also to profit from involving in a sector with promising technological perspectives. The main takeaway is that institutional factors help explain why people in countries with worsened inflation and institutional performance tend to hold a large fraction of Bitcoins in assets. Obviously, monetary and institutional fragility is underestimated in the general discussion about the nature of digital money.

This paper investigates the impact of debts on corporate cash holding levels and how this impact varies through five large markets of the ASEAN economic community due to different business environment features, namely, macroeconomic factors and legal characteristics. Using the Generalized Method of Moments for dynamic panel models to analyze mega data of non-financial ASEAN-5 firms from 2009 to 2018, this study examined that ASEAN-5 firms maintain relatively high cash after the financial crisis. Second, macroeconomic policies strongly affect the adjustment speed of corporate cash holdings and corporate cash reserve levels in ASEAN-5 firms. Besides, the estimates indicate that there is an alternative nexus between debts and cash reserves in ASEAN-5 firms. Finally, the impact of debts on corporate cash holdings is sustainably influenced by the macroeconomic conditions and the specific characteristics of the legal environment. This paper provides a rational framework for decision-making by corporate managers and macro-policymakers to solve the agency problems related to the alternative nexus between free cash flow and debt.

High and sustainable growth of gross domestic product with stable inflation is one of the objectives of the most macroeconomic policies both in the world and in Vietnam. Therefore, price stability plays a vital role in assuring GDP growth. In order to stabilize prices, fiscal and monetary policies need to be appropriately managed. The aim of this study is to assess the impact of the monetary and fiscal policies on inflation in Vietnam during the period from 1997 to 2020. This study has applied the vector autoregression (VAR) model along with data gathered from the World Bank and General Statistics Office of Vietnam. The research results indicate that Vietnam’s inflation is positively influenced by a fiscal deficit (2.943), money supply (2.672), government expenditure (8.347), and interest rate (3.187). Among the factors, government expenditure has the biggest influence on inflation. Besides, trade openness (–0.311) also influences inflation, but the effect is negative and negligible. Finally, the policy implications are focused on coordinating fiscal and monetary policies maintaining a moderate level of inflation for economic growth.

Acknowledgment
This article is funded from the funding source of the research: “Solutions to deal with the risk of financial instability from support packages to fight economic recession caused by the covid-19 pandemic” with code B2022-MHN-02 by Vietnam Misnistry of Education and Training.

This study aims to investigate the impact of the share buyback process and its motives on financial performance from an accounting and economic perspective. The study sample consisted of 66 firms listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange from 2009 to 2020 and employed the OLS regression analysis. The results show a positive effect of share buybacks on financial performance, measured by the added economic value (EVA) and the return on equity (ROE). In contrast, the results show an insignificant effect of share buybacks on the return on assets (ROA). The study found that management’s motives to buy back shares affect a company’s financial performance. The study also found that management’s motive to achieve a cash surplus improves the company’s financial performance. The study also found that the company’s management motive to increase earnings per share is one of the most important motives for the company to buy back shares, which also improves the company’s financial performance. The study also showed that the economic value added (EVA) is one of the most important measures of financial performance, in which the repurchase of shares had the most significant impact in improving it over the return on assets or the return on equity. However, the study did not find evidence that the firms repurchase of shares out of increased financial leverage affects the financial performance. Moreover, the study found that increasing earnings per share is the most crucial motive for sharing buybacks in the Egyptian market.

Acknowledgments
I thank Jeddah International College for funding this research and continuous support from the Dean, Dr. Tariq Hamdi, and the general manager, Mr. Yazid Al Tunisi.
I thank Professor Dr. Mohamed Tahoun, Professor of Financial Accounting at Alexandria University, for reviewing this research before sending it to the journal.

The paper examines the status and future potential of innovative finance in mitigating public infrastructure financing gaps in Zimbabwe. The study is descriptive. Data were collected through 23 interviews and 32 questionnaires. Interviews were conducted with managers of government of Zimbabwe ministries and parastatal enterprises, and the results were analyzed using thematic analysis. Whilst the questionnaires were distributed to officers of government of Zimbabwe ministries and parastatal enterprises and analyzed using Stata v14. The findings revealed that Zimbabwe does not currently finance public infrastructure using conventional innovative financing instruments. However, there are innovations in the combination of conventional financing instruments such as bonds, loans, and budget appropriations to finance power (electricity) infrastructure to a limited extent. Scope and potential exist for using innovative finance once a supportive legal and regulatory framework for public private partnerships (PPP) and other innovative financing instruments is in place in Zimbabwe. Using a binary logistic regression model, the findings showed that the infrastructure sector is the only factor significantly influencing innovative infrastructure financing at the 5% significance level with p-value < 0.05. The study recommends Zimbabwe to follow the South African Public Private Partnership framework by developing provincial and municipal regulations anchored in national legislation. There is latent potential for closing the public infrastructure financing gap in Zimbabwe using innovative finance.

This study empirically examined the dynamic impact of foreign capital inflows and trade openness on output performance and national productivity in 31 selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) between 1985 and 2018. The study employed random effects and fixed effects models to estimate the coefficients. However, the results from the two models portray similar behaviors. Both estimates revealed a significant relationship between output performance and the independent variables. This suggests that the macroeconomic variables examined are good explanatory variables for analyzing the determinants of output performance and national productivity in the SSA region. The study further found that foreign capital inflows, trade openness and inflation rate have a positive and significant influence on output performance and national productivity. In contrast, exchange rate and interest rate exhibited a negative and significant relationship with such output performance. This result implies that policymakers in SSA countries must formulate policies that can successfully ensure trade openness and promote foreign capital inflows so as to stimulate national productivity and boost output performance in the region. Therefore, it can be concluded that foreign capital inflows and trade openness affect the industrial sector in contributing to output performance and national productivity in the SSA countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unexpected event that causes stock market investors to panic so that their value drops drastically. Operating cash flow and free cash flow are indicators of a company’s financial statements that are used as a reference for investors’ decision making in the stock market. A firm’s cash flows reflect real changes in the firm’s value for money. Cash flow growth can provide information on how well the firm’s performance is in generating incremental cash inflows that can increase firm value. This study aims to explore the relationship between cash flow growth before the COVID-19 pandemic and after the COVID-19 outbreak on stock price performance. This study uses the OLS regression method with a total sample of 426 companies in the Indonesian capital market in the period March 2, 2020 to March 2, 2021. The results show that cash flow growth from operations and free cash flow growth had no significant effect on stock return after COVID-19 outbreaks in years 2020 to 2021. Sales growth, market capitalization and stock return before the COVID-19 outbreak from 2019 to 2020 had a significant negative correlation with the post COVID-19 outbreak stock return. Then, sectors whose stock performance is positively correlated after the COVID-19 outbreak are basic industry, chemicals, miscellaneous industry and infrastructure. This shows that the economic crisis caused by COVID-19 is an anomaly in the stock market. Therefore, cash flow is not relevant information for investors in predicting a company’s performance during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

This paper investigates volatility spillovers in the stock market in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic by using GARCH family models. The empirical analysis is focused on the dynamics of the NIKKEI 225 stock market index during the sample period from July 30, 1998, to January 24, 2022. In other words, the sample period covers both the period of the global financial crisis (GFC) and the COVID-19 pandemic. The econometrics includes GARCH (1,1), GJR (1,1), and EGARCH (1,1) models. By applying GARCH family models, this empirical study also examines the long-term behavior of the Japanese stock market.
The Japanese stock market is much more stable and efficient than emerging or frontier markets characterized by higher volatility and lower liquidity. The paper establishes that NIKKEI 225 index dynamics is different in intensity in the case of the two most recent extreme events analyzed, namely the global financial crisis (GFC)of 2007–2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings confirmed the presence of the leverage effect during the sample period. Moreover, the empirical results identified the presence of high volatility in the sample returns of the selected stock market. Nevertheless, the econometric framework showed that the negative implications of the GFC were much more severe and caused more significant contractions compared to the COVID-19 pandemic for the Japanese stock market. This study contributes to the existing literature by providing additional empirical evidence on the long-term behavior of the stock market in Japan, especially in the context of extreme events.

The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the effect of financial constraints and corporate governance as moderating variables on the determinants of tax avoidance, which includes foreign activity, corporate social responsibility, and political connections. All companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange from 2017 to 2019 are the objects of this study. The panel data regression was used to address the research question. The findings show that foreign activity, corporate social responsibility, and political connections significantly affected tax avoidance with alpha 5%. The results also show that corporate governance can reduce the positive impact of foreign activity, corporate social responsibility, and political connection on tax avoidance with alpha 1%.
Moreover, financial constraints may strengthen the positive impact of corporate social responsibility on tax avoidance with alpha 5%. The findings further provide empirical evidence about one of the strategies businesses use to conduct tax avoidance, notably foreign activity, corporate social responsibility, and political connection. Thus, companies that implement good corporate governance could reduce corporate tax avoidance acts, which can harm the company’s image and lead to a decrease in company value. This study discovered a new proxy for measuring financial constraints, as well as developments in the political connection.

This study aims to examine the effect of product market competition on a firm’s investments in research and development (R&D) and how this effect varies depending on the firm’s internal corporate governance. This study employs the regression method to analyze the association between product market competition and a firm’s R&D investment. Since product market competition works effectively as an external corporate governance mechanism that reduces agency problems and information asymmetry, this study hypothesizes that a competitive product market promotes R&D investments. Using 11,560 firm-year observations of Korean listed firms for 2001–2020, this study finds a positive association between product market competition and R&D investment. The result also shows this association is more pronounced for firms with weak internal corporate governance mechanisms. Furthermore, additional analysis shows that the effect of product market competition on a firm’s R&D investment is stronger for firms in the low-tech industry. This study provides new insights on the inconclusive association between product market competition and a firm’s R&D investment and practical implications that product market competition drives firms to invest in R&D.

Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Gachon University research fund of 2021.(GCU-202103550001)

The recent India-China geopolitical conflicts have presented enormous uncertainty to the investors in various sectoral indices of the Indian stock market. This empirical study aims to examine the impact of intensified India-China geopolitical conflicts 2020 on investors’ herding behavior in the National Stock Exchange sectoral indices. The high-frequency data of three major NIFTY sectoral indices (Auto, Energy, and Pharma) are used in an intensified geopolitical event window to spot precisely the traces of the investors’ herding behavior. Furthermore, multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MFDFA) is employed to obtain Hurst Exponent values (h(q)) for the NIFTY sectoral indices. The findings reveal that these NIFTY sectoral indices exhibited profound traces of herding behavior on the event day (t = 0) due to the heightened India-China geopolitical clashes. In addition, these indices depicted an overall higher level herding behavior with the (h(q)) values close to 0.72 throughout the intensified geopolitical event window. The study concludes that the sectors highly reliant on the Chinese supplies and with significant trade linkages with China depicted a higher level of herding behavior in their indices. Further, the presence of herding behavior in these sectoral indices is due to the operational and supply-chain risks posed by the geopolitical event.

Acknowledgments
The authors express their sincere thanks of gratitude to Dr. Bikramaditya Ghosh (Associate Professor, Symbiosis Institute of Business and Management, Bangalore, India) and Dr. Iqbal Thonse Hawaldar (Professor, College of Business Administration, Kingdom University, Riffa, Bahrain) for their instrumental role in encouraging and motivating them to accomplish this publication. The authors also extend their sincere thanks to Dr. Manu K.S and Dr. Surekha Nayak (Assistant Professor, School of Business and Management, CHRIST (Deemed to be university), Bangalore, India) for their continued support throughout this empirical investigation.

Information from financial reports plays an important role for stakeholders in making business decisions. The information efficiency is even more meaningful when it is relevant and useful to users. The purpose of the paper is to examine the impact of control activities on the information efficiency of the financial reports of Forbes enterprises in Vietnam. The paper uses time series data and the sample includes 250 observations from 2016 to 2020. The paper uses ordinary least squares to experimentally test hypotheses. The results indicate there are two factors out of four that have a negative impact on the information efficiency of financial reports, including control activity members and female members of the control activities. The control activity members have a higher impact than female members. To enhance the information efficiency of Forbes enterprises’ financial reports, Vietnamese state agencies should strengthen control and supervision of legal regulations so that Forbes enterprises can raise awareness on the information efficiency of financial reports.

Macroeconomic policy (fiscal and monetary) dynamics are interesting to analyze, especially considering corporate performance. This paper aims to determine the effect of macroeconomic policy on the company’s profit rate. Effectiveness of tax revenue (ETAX), realization of tax revenue (RTAX), Bank of Indonesian rate (BIRT), investment growth (INVG), realization of investments (RINV), infrastructure fund allocation rate (INFR), and realization of infrastructure funds (RINF) are macroeconomic policy variables. This study uses a sample of 256 companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) in 2005–2019. This paper employs such methods as GMM, using Wald-test and Sargan’s test. GMM estimator result shows that the instrument of infrastructure fund realization policy (RINF), investment growth (INVG), and investment realization (RINV) affect the company’s profit rate (PROF). Therefore, companies need to pay attention to the government development plans, investment growth, and investment realization, which can improve company performance. The result, government’s development for the 2005–2009 and 2015–2019 periods shows a significant difference in companies’ ability to generate profits.

Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Islam Nahdlatul Ulama Jepara (Unisnu), and the Institute of Research and Community Services (LPPM) Unisnu Jepara Indonesia, which has supported this study.

Academics studied the theory of a company’s communication when it is involved into a crisis but they were less concerned about the impact of the communication on a listed company’s share price, especially when it resulted from a shock event. There is a lack of information about the role played by news media. The aim of this paper is to investigate if in cases of shock events (i) a company’s response strategy has a different effect on shareholders, observing the effect on share prices, and (ii) how the news media can affect the value change. Using the event study methodology, the Cumulative Abnormal Return of companies’ share prices involved in shock events was calculated. Statistics show a best effect of an accommodative response than a defensive strategy in cases of scandals and product recalls. There is no valuable impact of company communication in cases of incidents. With news media variable, the results show a worsening effect with bad news and a mitigating effect with good news. It was proved that the impact of a response strategy is surpassed by news media. When there is absolute certainty of guilt for a given situation, it is more convenient for management to apologize, and when there is no certainty, there was no substantial difference, because in the mind of an investor the focus shifts to the event itself. The news media has been shown to have a huge impact on investor perception, even more so than a company’s best response strategy.

Earnings management (EM, hereafter), which affects the quality of corporate financial information, continues to receive increased attention from practitioners and legislators. The paper deals with this topic and attempts to investigate the EM practices around the tax rate cut following the Tunisian tax reform of 2021. Evidence of EM is examined by focusing on both accounting and real EM. From a sample of 61 Tunisian public offering companies, observed from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2021, the results estimated from the system GMM model argue that this tax rate reduction constitutes a real incentive to shift income from the period of higher tax rate (2020) towards the period of lower tax rate (2021) achieving significant savings for corporations. Furthermore, the results show that Tunisian firms have both accounting and real EM downward in the second half of 2020, and that the former is sharper. For the first half of 2021, the results show a joint use of accruals management and real management upwards, and that the latter is broader. These findings may be useful to tax policy-makers in the application of tax rules put in place to counter aggressive tax evasion. In addition, external auditors and tax auditors should consider the period around the change in the corporation tax rate to be more suspect.

External public debt is not only a means of raising funds to finance public needs, but also an effective tool for stabilizing a country`s economic development, the assessment and analysis of which allows making effective management decisions at the state level and developing effective measures to improve the economic and debt situation. The paper aims to assess the impact of external public debt on Ukraine’s economic development indicators (GDP, foreign direct investment, foreign exchange reserves). In order to achieve the stated goal distributed lag models are used, which allow modeling a country’s economic development (according to key indicators) within certain forecast scenarios. The study covers the period from 2009 to 2021. An analysis of the dynamics of external public debt in Ukraine led to the conclusion about the unstable debt situation in Ukraine and a significant increase in external debt in recent years. Econometric models with a distributed lag of three years are built and the results of the influence of external public debt in different time periods are analyzed. The average lag in the built models is about one and a half years (for GDP) and two and a half years (for foreign direct investment). This value indicates that the average change (increase/decrease) in external public debt will change economic development over time. A positive conclusion is made on the possibility of not only assessing the time lag between the indicators, but also on the prospects for forecasting both the public debt and key indicators of Ukraine`s economic development.

Acknowledgment
The article was published as part of research projects “Convergence of economic and educational transformations in the digital society: modeling the impact on regional and national security” (No. 0121U109553) and “Reforming the lifelong learning system in Ukraine for the prevention of the labor emigration: a coopetition model of institutional partnership” (No. 0120U102001).

In practice, auditors sometimes have a hard time detecting false financial statements since they only look at the figures on the financial statements. Consequently, they ignore the red flags in the annual reports’ wording. This study aims to analyze how the level of readability of annual reports and abusive earnings management affects fraudulent financial reporting. A total of 240 annual reports from publicly traded industrial businesses were used. The paper used data from the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) and each sampled companies’ official website. A multiple linear regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. Falsified financial statements are the dependent variable, while annual report readability and abusive earnings management are independent variables. The Dechow F-Score is used to assess whether financial statements are false. The annual report’s readability is assessed using the Flesch Reading Ease, Length, Flesch-Kincaid, and Lasbarhets Indexes. Finally, accrual discretionary and real earnings management are used to uncover earnings management misuse. According to the findings, dishonest earnings management has a significant influence on financial statement fraud. Moreover, abusive earnings management can aid in the detection of falsified financial statements.

Acknowledgments
Rector Universitas Trunojoyo Madura supported this paper under Grant Number 2285/UN46.3.1/PN/2019. Any and all views, results, conclusions, or recommendations stated in this material are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of Universitas Trunojoyo Madura. The authors would like to express their gratitude to the Rector of Universitas Trunojoyo Madura for his efforts and cooperation in conducting this investigation.