Return–volume nexus in financial markets: A survey of research

This paper provides a systematic review of the return–volume literature, broadly defined to include theoretical and empirical research relating to the intramarket and cross-market interlinkages between security return and trading volume characteristics in four financial markets, namely, the stock, bond, foreign exchange, and futures markets. Viewed through this lens, this paper attempts to review previous empirical research within a unified theoretical framework that relates the interlinkages between return and volume characteristics in various financial markets. Overall, this paper marks several interesting areas of debate and controversy based on several controversial theories and empirical findings in the literature, suggesting directions for future research.     

A network analysis of global banking: 1978–2010

We analyze the global banking network using data on cross-border banking flows for 184 countries during 1978–2010. We find that the density of the global banking network defined by these flows is pro-cyclical, expanding and contracting with the global cycle of capital flows. We also find that country connectedness in the network tends to rise before banking and debt crises and to fall in their aftermath. Despite a historically unique build-up in aggregate flows prior to the global financial crisis, network density in 2007 was comparable to earlier peaks. This suggests that factors other than connectedness, such as the location of the initial shock to the core of the network, have contributed to the severity of the crisis. The global financial crisis stands out as an unusually large perturbation to the global banking network, with indicators of network density in 2008 reaching all-time lows.     

The Urban–Rural Gap of Chinese Household Finance

Using data from a large household survey, we investigate the size of China’s urban–rural gap in ownership of bank deposits, risky financial assets, and credit cards. We further examine the factors underlying the gap using decomposition analysis. Compared to their urban counterparts, rural Chinese are much less likely to own a variety of financial products. Both demand-side barriers and supply-side barriers to financial inclusion exist in China. More, we use instrumental variable analysis to address the endogeneity of the local supply of financial service. Above all, our study indicates that a large financial services vacuum in rural areas needs to be filled.     

Futures research in the USSR: Part II: 1981–85

This article discusses futures research in the USSR from 1981 to 1985. It looks at the various articles and publications covering futures research and how numerous commissions are organized and put to full use by the state.     

Finance company failure in New Zealand during 2006–2009: Predictable failures?

Over 31 finance companies (non-bank deposit takers) failed in New Zealand over the 2006–2009 period. With an estimated loss of over NZ$3 billion, there was public outcry and a parliamentary inquiry into the causes of the failures, but few have asked if this was a predictable event. We find that failed finance companies have lower capital adequacy, inferior asset quality, more loans falling due, higher earnings and lower cash flows. Furthermore, failed companies have a longer audit lag and some trustees appear to have a greater percentage of failed firms than others. Our logistic model can successfully classify failure one year before for 88.7% of companies. Our logistic model (neural network) can also correctly classify up to 87.5% (83.3%) of a holdout sample. Our results are of interest to regulators and practitioners, as we show that publicly available data could distinguish between failed and non-failed finance companies.     

Revealing global hot spots of technological disasters: 1900–2013

Technological disasters can happen in any country in the world and cause human fatalities, injuries, and economic damages, among other physical and social consequences. As the world adopts more technologies, becomes further industrialized, continues faster urbanization, and has larger and more concentrated population, the occurrences and impacts of technological disasters are likely to be more frequent and severe and call for more scholarly research. However, there is a lack of good models for reliable technological risk analysis, which is the foundation for effective preparation for, sound mitigation of, and quick recovery from technological disasters. This research develops an expected risk analysis model, including a base sub-model and a location quotient sub-model, for nearly 200 countries of the world, using the technological disasters recorded in the EM-DAT database for the period 1900–2013. The sub-models are based on country-level risk impacts in terms of expected fatalities, injuries, people affected, and economic losses, their standard deviations, ranges, and corresponding country percentages and ranks. The sub-models are validated using correlations and scatter plots for the observed and expected risk impacts. The results show that the sub-models perform well by yielding consistent expected risks and related measures, indicating that the expected risk analysis model is a reasonably good alternative to existing risk analysis models.     

A long-term assessment of finance research performance among Asia–Pacific academic institutions (1990–2008)

We provide a long-term assessment of finance research in the Asia–Pacific region. Similar to the earlier findings in Chan et al. (2001) and Chan et al. (2005), the Asia–Pacific academic institutions, as a group, perform very well during 1990–2008. The two quality-adjusted weighted article metrics suggest that institutions in the region exhibit an increasing trend in the absolute number of articles and the relative percentage share of global research output. The Gini coefficients, while showing that the degree of concentration of research output continues to be high, suggest that the degree of research output concentration steadily decreases over the period. During the sample period, the top five institutions are Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the University of New South Wales, Chinese University of Hong Kong, National University of Singapore, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The top two researchers' percentage share of total research output ranges from a low of 18.7% in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology to a high of 59.8% in RMIT University. Among the top 25 institutions, a total of 14 top researchers (28%) have left their affiliated institutions as of June 1, 2009, suggesting considerable job mobility among active researchers.     

Accounting research in the Asia–Pacific region: an update

We provide an updated study of accounting research in the Asia–Pacific region using the publication records of six premier accounting journals (top-6) from 1991 to 2010, and augment the findings with the broader range of publications from an additional twenty accounting journals during the same period. Overall, the higher education institutions (HEIs) in the region produced 7.7 and 11.1 % of the total weighted number of articles (wt-articles) in the top-6 and 20 accounting journals. Interestingly, HEIs in the region exhibit a trend toward an increase in the yearly wt-articles and relative percentage of the total. The general performance of the accounting programs in the region is persistent during 1991–2010. The Asia–Pacific accounting programs are particularly successful in placing publications in journals such as Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting. The accounting research productivity, however, is dominated by select institutions in Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Singapore. Several institutions in these four countries/areas maintain a consistently high ranking. In terms of top-6 accounting journal publications, the top five institutions are the University of New South Wales, Nanyang Technological University, the University of Melbourne, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. The percentage share of the research output among the top five institutions is high, suggesting that a high hurdle is set for up-and-coming institutions to move up the rankings.     

Accounting research in banking–A review

<正>1.Why carry out accounting research in the banking industry?1.1.Why focus on the banking industry?The banking industry is critically important to national an...     

Content analysis in environmental reporting research: Enrichment and rehearsal of the method in a British–German context

A number of previous studies have utilised content analysis as a method for analysing environmental reporting. In this study, a method, devised by the authors and capable of both mechanistic and interpretative narrative interrogation is presented. By adopting a matrix approach to environmental narratives, multiple information characteristics can be taken into account when analysing disclosures. The method developed in this paper (termed CONI or consolidated narrative interrogation) provides a measure of information diversity, information content and volume. The content analysis instrument facilitates data capture inaccessible to less penetrating research instruments.The joint objectives of this paper are to report on the development of CONI and to demonstrate its capacity to extend the capability of content analysis methods. In particular, the paper demonstrates the utility of CONI through the application to a matched sample of 14 pairs of companies from the United Kingdom and Germany over a period of five years. Findings include the observation that information diversity has broadened over time. The study also notes the dominance of narrative over numerical content with little disclosure containing comparative or contextualised numerical information. There were few significant differences in environmental reporting between the two countries. The paper concludes with suggested opportunities for future research using the CONI research instrument.     

The Finance–Growth Nexus and Poverty Reduction in Western China

In this article, we study the effect of financial development (FD) on economic growth in western China. Special attention is paid to the western region because of the large-scale development strategy in West China. We specify the regression models based on the endogenous growth theory. The empirical results show that (1) FD can promote economic growth mainly through improving TFP; (2) FD is more important than human capital in promoting GDP growth; (3) The effect of FD on TFP growth is significant statistically in all regions, but it is the most significant economically in the western region of China.     

An analysis of accounting education research in accounting education: an international journal – 1992–2001

This paper reviews the research papers contained within the first ten volumes of Accounting Education: an international journal since its launch in 1992, identifying both areas that have been well covered and those that present opportunities for further research. The paper compares coverage with accounting education research published in the USA. It is hoped that the paper will be of interest to researchers who wish to establish the prior literature on their research topics or who are searching for research topics and/or methods that have been hitherto underexplored. The paper also provides some observations about the methods employed and source of papers in order to gain further insight into the state of accounting education research at the start of the 21st century.     

Machine Learning and Expert Judgement: Analyzing Emerging Topics in Accounting and Finance Research in the Asia–Pacific

In this paper, we focus on the question to what extent machine learning (ML) tools can be used to support systematic literature reviews. We apply a ML approach for topic detection to analyze emerging topics in the literature—our context is accounting and finance research in the Asia–Pacific region. To evaluate the robustness of the approach, we compare findings from the automated ML approach with the results from a manual analysis of the literature. The automated approach uses a keyword algorithm detection mechanism whereby the manual analysis uses common techniques for qualitative data analysis, that is, triangulation between researchers (expert judgement). From our paper, we conclude that both methods have strengths and weaknesses. The automated analysis works well for large corpora of text and provides a very standardized and non-biased way of analyzing the literature. However, the human researcher is potentially better equipped to evaluate current issues and future trends in the literature. Overall, the best results might be achieved when a variety of tools are used together.     

Abnormal Returns in the Acquisition Market: The Case of Bank Holding Companies, 1990–1993

Recent evidence suggests that announcements of bank holding company acquisitions result in wealth transfers from the bidding to target shareholders. Empirically, this is demonstrated through findings of negative average abnormal returns to bank holding company acquirers and positive average abnormal returns to targets on announcement. Using a sample of acquisitions from the early 1990s—a period marked by the removal of significant geographic entry barriers—this paper reexamines the issue by applying a general statistical model to the event study framework to more precisely measure abnormal returns. In particular, we model returns according to the GARCH process to control for time-varying volatility. With respect to the unconditional distributions of acquirer and target abnormal returns, our findings are consistent with prior research. Further investigation into the conditional distribution of acquirer returns finds that, on announcement, interstate acquisitions using the purchase method of accounting actually increased shareholder wealth for acquirers (on average) by 1.44%. However, over a longer event horizon, the most important determinants of acquirer abnormal returns appear to be the relative size of the transaction and the method of accounting.     

Pedigree or Placement? An Analysis of Research Productivity in Finance

We examine pedigree and placement effects of research productivity in finance and find a notable placement effect: authors who are currently affiliated with elite institutions tend to be more productive, especially among the top three finance journals. The placement effect, however, weakens in more recent years. We also observe a pedigree effect in the top three journals, where there is a higher concentration of publications by authors with degrees from elite institutions. We provide rankings of the institutions that are best at developing and training scholars.     

Individual and Institutional Contributors to the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics: 1988–1999

This article identifies the individuals and institutions contributing the research published in the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics during its first 12 years. Consistent with the trend in many fields, coauthorship has increased during the period. The top individual contributors vary across six-year periods as well as whether measured by appearances or pages. The concentration of publications by the top individuals has decreased over time. Unlike individuals, the top institutions are not sensitive to whether measured by appearances or pages or to whether measured using contemporaneous or current faculty affiliations. The breadth of the journal appears to be growing; contributions by universities outside the United States and by private firms and organizations have risen during the 12 years.     

State-owned enterprises in China: A review of 40 years of research and practice

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are important components of the Chinese economy. Although SOEs are generally considered inefficient in operations, China’s economy, which relies heavily on SOEs, has been highly successful over the last four decades. This indicates the importance of SOEs in China’s past and future economic success. Therefore, in this study, we review the literature on economic theories and 40 years of practice of Chinese SOEs and discuss implications for future research. Our review consists of four parts: the theories of SOEs and their reform, the performance and financing strategies of SOEs, corporate governance in SOEs, and corporate social responsibility in SOEs.     

Finance–Growth Nexus: New Insights from the West African Region

This article examines the impact of financial development on economic growth in the West African region accounting for both structural breaks and cross-sectional dependency. Although the panel data study reveals that financial development has positive impact on economic growth in the entire West African region, the disaggregated data analysis discovers that variations in financial development can only explain variations in economic growth in about 75% of the countries in West Africa. This study has succeeded in revealing the countries where finance accelerates growth and countries where it does not. The weak impact of finance on growth in some of the countries could be due to low income level, low level of financial development, weak institutions, macroeconomic instability, and high inflation rates. Knowing where finance spurs growth and where it does not is fundamental for policymaking.     

RegTech—the application of modern information technology in regulatory affairs: areas of interest in research and practice

We provide a high-level view on topics addressed in scientific articles about regulatory technology (RegTech), with a particular focus on technologies used. For this purpose, we first explore different denominations for RegTech and derive search queries to search relevant literature portals. From the hits of that information retrieval process, we select 55 articles outlining the application of information technology in regulatory affairs with an emphasis on the financial sector. In comparison, we examine the technological scope of 347 RegTech companies and compare our findings with the scientific literature. Our research reveals that ‘compliance management’ is the most relevant topic in practice, and ‘risk management’ is the primary subject in research. The most significant technologies as of today are ‘artificial intelligence’ and distributed ledger technologies such as ‘blockchain’.