The causal relation between government revenue and spending: Evidence from Egypt and Jordan

In investigating the causal relation between government revenue and spending, our empirical results support the tax-and-spend hypothesis for Egypt and the fiscal synchronization hypothesis for Jordan. Breaking away from these historical trends is essential for both countries to eliminate the budget deficit and therefore ensure the availability of domestic saving for private investment. To cope with unemployment and poverty, continuing privatization is recommended for both countries to improve productivity and efficiency in the domestic economy. Privatization should lead to higher domestic saving and investment and at the same time eliminate the budget deficit by enhancing revenue and curbing spending. (JEL H62, H63)     

Social reporting by islamic banks

The last thirty years have witnessed the appearance and rapid expansion of Islamic banking both inside and outside the Islamic world. Islamic banks provide financial products that do not violate Sharia , the Islamic law of human conduct. The Islamic principles upon which the banks claim to operate give an important role to social issues. Applying these principles, we develop a benchmark set of social disclosures appropriate to Islamic banks. These are then compared, using a disclosure index approach, the actual social disclosures contained in the annual reports of twenty-nine Islamic banks (located in sixteen countries) to this benchmark. In addition, content analysis is undertaken to measure the volume of social disclosures. Our analysis suggests that social reporting by Islamic banks falls significantly short of our expectations. The results of the analysis also suggest that banks required to pay the Islamic religious tax Zakah provide more social disclosures than banks not subject to Zakah .     

E-mail Advertising in Syria: Assessing Beliefs,Attitudes, and Behaviors

The present study aimed at assessing Syrian consumers' beliefs regarding, attitude, and behavioral responses toward e-mail advertising and investigating the relationships among those variables. A cross-sectional survey was conducted and it yielded 273 valid responses. The proposed model was analyzed and tested using a structural equation modelling approach. Our findings showed that both informativeness and entertainment beliefs positively predicted Syrian consumers' attitudes toward e-mail advertising. Additionally, attitude was found to fully mediate the relationship between beliefs regarding and behavioral responses toward e-mail advertising.     

The changing pattern of foreign trade specialization in Indian manufacturing

This paper examines the pattern of international trade specializationin Indian manufacturing since the mid-1980s by using data ontrade flows. Low-technology sectors still dominate the categoriesfor which India exhibits the largest degree of trade specialization.By contrast, high-technology sectors are prevalent among thecategories for which India is import-dependent. Significantly,India has experienced an improvement in the degree of specializationin some of the most dynamic sectors of world trade.     

Tariff liberalization and trade specialization: Lessons from India

This paper analyzes the effects of policy reform on the structure of India’s trade in manufactures, from 1990 to 2006. It computes comparative advantage indicators on the basis of disaggregated trade flow data and assesses the effects of trade liberalization on the evolution of India’s pattern of trade specialization. Industries where import tariffs have been reduced the most have experienced the highest increase in specialization. Moreover, trade liberalization has helped India improve its comparative advantage in industries with medium- to high-technology content, as well as in some of the industries enjoying the most robust growth in global demand. Liberalization policies have been instrumental in enhancing the international competitiveness of industries.     

Comparison of Entrepreneurship Environment for Executives between State-owned and Private Enterprises in China

This research aims at exploring the differences in the effects of environment on entrepreneurship growth between state‐owned enterprises and private businesses. Through executive investigation, reasons are provided for better performance of private businesses. Environmental factors, including economic, legal, technological, cultural and social factors, which influence entrepreneurship growth, are examined to determine differences between state‐owned enterprise and private business executives. It is found that the methods of executive assignment to managerial posts determine executives’effort towards entrepreneurship.     

An Analysis of Post-Deregulation Savings-and-Loan Failures

A number of studies have looked at the financial characteristics of problem or failed savings and loans but none have used data taken exclusively from the post-deregulation period. In this paper, the financial characteristics of savings and loan associations that failed during the period 1984-II to 1985-I are analyzed, using both univariate difference in means tests and multivariate logistic regression. Both the known unequal population prior probabilities and the estimated unequal misclassification costs are taken into account in the logistic regression. The empirical results are compared to those of recent studies by Benston [7] and Barth, Brumbaugh, Sauerhaft and Wang [5] . The financial ratios that significantly affect the probability of failure are different in the three studies.     

Evaluating virtuality in teams: a conceptual model

Major parts of teams deployed in contemporary organisations to some extent possess the attributes of virtuality. In this context, at high levels of virtuality, team requirements become quite different from those of face-to-face teams. Thus, evaluating virtuality in teams is a key prerequisite for assessing its requirements and defining the applicable managerial policies. Nonetheless, the concept of virtuality in teams has remained elusive within the extant literature. To address this, this paper deploys a qualitative meta-analysis to synthesise the relevant findings drawing upon an exhaustive review of the literature. The study conceptualises the phenomenon of virtuality through proposing a conceptual framework for evaluating the level of virtuality in teams. This paper contributes to the field by offering further insight into the concept of virtuality and directs future investigations by providing the ground for validating the presented conceptual model.     

Non-linearity in the determinants of capital structure: evidence from UK firms

We demonstrate that, by exploiting more fully the distribution of leverage, conditional quantile regression methods yield new insights into the choice of leverage ratio. For UK listed companies we find that not only is the estimated effect of the explanatory variables different at different quantiles of the distribution, but also that the effect of a variable changes sign between low leveraged and high leveraged firms.