PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the investment appraisal process of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Lebanon and examine how political risk and Islamic finance considerations impact the capital budgeting (CB) process.Design/methodology/approachThis paper conducts semi-structured interviews with senior executives of Lebanese SMEs to investigate their CB practices.FindingsThe results indicate that Lebanese SMEs place more emphasis on non-financial factors, such as political priorities and personal experience, than financial factors when analysing potential projects. Lebanese companies also use more than one method of investment appraisal, with payback being the most popular technique. Most interviewees indicated that their companies had experienced capital rationing and that it tended to be imposed externally. Political risk was consistently cited as a key determinant of project evaluation methods, while some respondents also acknowledged informal alignment with Islamic finance principles.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the literature by examining whether capital investment appraisal techniques used in advanced Western economies are applicable in an emerging Middle Eastern context. It advances the understanding of how political risk and institutional fragility reshape CB behaviour among SMEs. The study also offers early evidence on how Islamic finance norms may inform investment decisions even in secular or mixed financial environments. Overall, it highlights the need for context-sensitive adaptations to conventional CB frameworks in high-risk, culturally embedded business environments.

PurposeThis study examines the influence of institutional pressures on the extent of corporate risk reporting by Saudi-listed companies, drawing on Oliver's (1991) framework of strategic responses to institutional processes and the institutional logics perspective. The research investigates ten hypotheses that reflect the causes, constituents, content, control, and context of institutional pressures.Design/methodology/approachA disclosure index was developed based on IFRS 7 to measure the extent of risk information disclosed in annual reports. Using a sample of 104 companies for the year 2019 and employing multiple regression analysis, the hypotheses are tested to identify institutional determinants that influence risk reporting practices.FindingsFirm size, auditor type, enforcement actions by the Capital Market Authority, and director shareholdings significantly influence risk disclosure levels. By contrast, profitability, family representation, gearing, presence of chartered accountants, market uncertainty, and foreign sales do not show statistically significant relationships. The findings offer mixed support for Oliver's theoretical predictions, revealing that firms are more likely to acquiesce when institutional pressures align with their goals or are coercively imposed. The results highlight that corporate, market, state, and professional logics shape disclosure practices, whilst also underscoring the contextual complexity of institutional influences in emerging markets.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the literature by extending institutional theory to risk reporting practices in Saudi Arabia and providing insights into how legitimacy, coercion, and professional norms interact with firm characteristics. The findings also inform policy by emphasising the importance of regulatory enforcement and auditor quality in enhancing disclosure practices in transitional economies.

Abstract Following the implementation of capital market reforms, Saudi Arabia has opened up its stock market to international investors. This liberalisation has led to the inclusion of the stock exchange into leading global indices, which is expected to lead to an influx of foreign investment. Thus, it is important and timely to examine the efficiency of the Saudi stock market. To that end, this paper conducts a comprehensive investigation of the predictive ability and profitability of a popular trading rule, the moving average rule, using firm-level data for the Saudi stock market over the period 1st January 2008 to 31st December 2017. The results show that the moving average rule has predictive ability; the active rules for a majority of the sample companies outperformed the corresponding passive strategy. Furthermore, the results were economically significant as the rules were profitable even after the consideration of transaction costs. The results also showed that the most profitable moving average rules were those with short-moving average lengths, and that the introduction of a bandwidth, which serves to eliminate weak trading signals, had a positive impact on rule profitability. Importantly, the analysis showed that the most profitable component of the rule related to short selling as these trades resulted in higher profits than the long positions. A disaggregated analysis of sectors showed that the trading rules outperformed the buy-and-hold strategy in all seven industries considered, while the analysis of covariance revealed the importance of careful selection of filter size. Overall, the analysis documents significant inefficiencies in the Saudi stock market and suggests that the employment of a simple trading rule, based on past price data, can yield substantial profits across companies and sectors even in a costly trading environment. These findings suggest that the recent reforms that were implemented to improve the efficiency of the Saudi stock market have been suboptimal, and that further regulatory reform is required.

This article examines whether the level of weak-form efficiency of the Saudi stock market increased following liberalization in June 2015 when the market was opened up to foreign institutional investors. The results revealed that most sample companies and the market index did not follow a random walk over the sample period. However, the random walk hypothesis was not rejected after opening the market to foreign investors. This evidence implies that the steps taken by policy-makers to liberalize the Saudi stock market appear to have had a positive impact on the level of market efficiency.

This study examines the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic on the stock markets of China, India, Pakistan, the UK and the US using Generalised Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (GARCH) and Threshold GARCH models with COVID 19 as an exogenous dummy variable in the variance equation. The sample period of 2016–2021 is divided into two sub-periods: the pre-COVID 19 period and the COVID 19 period. The results of the study indicate that there was persistent volatility in these markets and that this volatility increased as a result of the pandemic. In addition, the Threshold GARCH results indicate that the asymmetric term was significant in all markets indicating that bad news, such as the pandemic, had a stronger impact on the conditional variance of the returns as compared to good news. In addition, the results further confirm that the US market had no significant impact on the volatility of the Chinese market during the pandemic. The results have important implications for (1) international investors regarding portfolio management and investment risk minimisation in situations like the COVID 19 pandemic; and (2) policy-makers in terms of how they respond to any future pandemic.

Purpose The current study investigates the impact of directors' attributes on the extent of compliance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) fair value disclosure requirements. The attributes investigated include directors' human capital (accounting qualification) and social capital (political association), directors' share ownership and the power distance between the chief executive officer (CEO) and the rest of the board members. Design/methodology/approach The study uses disclosure analysis to measure the extent of compliance with the fair value disclosure requirements of IFRS. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is used to test the relationship between the disclosure score and directors' attributes. Data were collected from the annual reports and websites of the sample companies. Findings Contrary to conventional belief, this study's findings suggest that directors' social capital and the power distance between the CEO and the rest of the board act as more powerful factors than directors' human capital in explaining corporate mandatory disclosure. Specifically, the results indicate that powerful actors form a dominant coalition and co-opt influential constituents from the institutional domain to neutralize the effect of legal coercion and the accounting expertise of board members and Big Four audit firms on the extent of compliance with institutional (fair value) rules. Research limitations/implications This study utilizes Oliver's (1991) framework of strategic response to institutional processes in the Bangladeshi context. Although the study provides new insights into corporate disclosure practices, findings are not generalizable due to different institutional settings in different countries. Therefore, future studies could replicate the approach in different institutional settings. Practical implications The findings of this study will be of interest to the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) as it focuses on a developing country that has adopted IFRS 13 and other fair value-related standards relatively recently. Originality/value The disclosure analysis contained in this study represents the first comprehensive analysis of the extent of compliance with the fair value disclosure requirements of IFRS. Furthermore, this study considers the impact of directors' social capital and finds that it is a more powerful determinant of the extent of compliance with IFRS as compared to human capital.

Purpose This paper aims to evaluate the processes and strategies of Nigerian banks towards achieving financial inclusion and offer recommendations for policies that can lead to effective and sustainable financial inclusion. Design/methodology/approach This paper conducts semi-structured interviews with senior executives of Nigerian banks to investigate their financial inclusion policies and practices. Findings This paper highlighted Nigerian banks’ views on dimensions that measure financial inclusion and found that they recognise that they play a pivotal role in providing access to formal financial services; however, their efforts to promote financial inclusion are provider-focused rather than customer-focused; they are keen to promote financial services usage; however, very little attention is paid to customer outcomes; financial inclusion is viewed as synonymous with access and innovations are not aiming for impact; and the sector is plagued with infrastructural challenges that breach service quality. Originality/value This paper reports on the practices of Nigerian banks towards financial inclusion and provides recommendations for rethinking sustainable financial inclusion. To date, this issue has not been investigated in the substantive literature. Nigeria is an ideal research site for examining financial inclusion. In recent years, the banking sector has made rapid strides in implementing policies to promote the adoption and usage of formal financial services. However, over half of the country’s adult population remains outside the formal financial system.

This study investigates the role of two prominent concepts in finance: limits to arbitrage and investor sentiment in stock prices. The study examines how changes in market-wide investor sentiment and limits to arbitrage can affect the performance of nine UK stock market anomalies. The extant literature relating to investor sentiment focuses mainly on the US stock market, whilst research on the UK market typically examines aggregated index-level data. In addition, previous studies have focused on examining investor sentiment and limits to arbitrage separately. Using data from UK-listed companies over the period January 1997 to December 2019, the study finds that five stock market anomalies were related to changes in UK investor sentiment and produced significantly higher returns following periods of high investor sentiment, while the effect of limits to arbitrage was mostly limited. However, the interaction analysis provided support to the limits to arbitrage theory and demonstrated that the effect of high investor sentiment on stock market anomalies was more pronounced when combined with high limits to arbitrage and had less effect during periods characterised by low limits to arbitrage.

Purpose This paper aims to examine how capital investment projects are appraised in Lebanon; whether the risk is incorporated into this process by Lebanese firms and the impact of political risk on the capital budgeting process. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a questionnaire survey to investigate the capital budgeting practices of companies located in Lebanon, which is a country characterised by a high level of political risk. Findings Lebanese companies tend to use more than one method of investment appraisal and, increasingly, they are using sophisticated discounted cashflow techniques alongside the payback period. The most widely used methods to evaluate risk include scenario and sensitivity analysis. Finally, political risk plays an important role in the capital budgeting processes of Lebanese companies. Originality/value The paper reports on whether the methods of capital investment appraisal used throughout advanced Western economies are used in the context of an emerging economy. In addition, Lebanon is an ideal research site to study capital budgeting as the conflicts in the country of the past 50 years have required sizeable new expenditure on capital projects; the country is characterised by high levels of political risk which may lead corporate managers to use different approaches to investment appraisal and it provides an opportunity to study capital budgeting decisions by private, unlisted firms.

Over the last decade, a number of studies have examined the costs and benefits from investing in equities traded on emerging stock markets (ESMs). The general conclusion to emerge from these studies is that investors have been able to improve portfolio performance significantly by including an emerging equity market component in investment portfolios. However, the ex-post framework utilised in past analyses potentially overstates the true level of gains which can be obtained from an emerging market diversification strategy; they are computed on the assumption that, with respect to the inputs to the portfolio decision, investors are blessed with perfect foresight. This paper attempts to overcome this problem by estimating the ex-ante gains available from investing in emerging stock markets. In particular, the paper investigates whether, by using a simple strategy based on historical data to forecast portfolio inputs, all of the gains which are available from ex-post analyses of diversification can be achieved in practice. The results obtained point overwhelmingly to the inadvisability of relying on historical data to identify ex-ante optimal emerging market portfolios; the strategies examined in this paper achieved very few of the gains attained in ex-post analyses of diversification.

This paper documents evidence of changes in the co-movement of stock returns and risk transmission among four South Asian stock markets over periods of regional market reform and global market instability. The sample period (1993–2015) is disaggregated into three sub-periods: before and after the establishment of the South Asian Federation of Exchanges (SAFE) and after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. The principal components investigation and cointegration analysis conclude that the co-movement among stock returns in this region altered amidst a change in the institutional context and global economic uncertainty. Using a tetra-variate GARCH-BEKK model, we find that, after the establishment of SAFE, the interactions among the markets increased through volatility spillovers, but decreased through shock spillovers. In addition, there were more shock and volatility spillovers in the last sub-period as compared to the first two sub-periods, indicating that risk transmission across countries increased during the period of uncertainty. In particular, the Indian stock market was a risk spreader in South Asia after the setup of SAFE and its influence on the regional stock markets increased even further after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

Traditional finance theory posits that the relation between the risk and return of stocks is positive. Equally, investment practice is often based on the contention that high (low) beta stocks earn higher (lower) returns. However, this fundamental relation is questioned by several researchers, who present mixed evidence. The purpose of this paper is to shed further light on this question by examining both market- and firm-level price data; employing a battery of tests, including individual market, panel and quantile regressions; analysing the nature of the relation during periods of high and low volatility and in bull and bear markets. The results indicate that there is no single robust relation between risk and return. Notably, the results suggest a positive relation when returns are high and during bear markets. Further, the finding of a positive relation is stronger at the market-level than the firm-level and over long time periods. However, a negative relation exists at low return levels, during bull markets and, even more so, at the individual firm level. Overall, the results suggest that the risk-return relation is switching in nature and is primarily driven by changing risk preferences. A positive relation exists when macroeconomic risk plays a larger role.

This paper critically examines the literature on risk reporting, largely dominated by the accounting standards for financial instruments (FI) issued by the FASB and the IASB. The analysis is motivated by the increased amount of FI-related research published in recent years, as well as by the conflicting findings that have emerged from these investigations. The increasing usage of risk-related FI, together with the financial collapses that this use has precipitated, provides a need for a review of research in this area. In discussing the key conclusions that emerge from the review, the paper identifies an agenda for future research and points to key omissions and deficiencies in the extant literature on risk reporting.

This article investigates the weak form of the efficient market hypothesis (EMH) for the Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE). In particular, it tests whether share returns on the KSE exhibit patterns which may be used to predict future share price changes. Ten filter rules are tested on weekly data for 42 firms over the period 1998–2011. The results suggest that the KSE was not weak-form efficient because patterns and trends were present in security prices. In addition, the results are consistent with the substantive literature which has argued that emerging stock markets are informationally inefficient, such as Fifield, Power and Sinclair (2005, 2008) and Xu (2010) and particularly those early studies of Al-Shamali (1989) and Al-Loughani and Moosa (1999) that looked at trading rules for the KSE.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to: examine the value relevance of financial instruments disclosure (FID) provided by Jordanian listed companies under International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS 7) as compared to that supplied under IAS 30/32; provide evidence about the value relevance of high vs low levels of FID; and investigate which components of FI-related information are more value relevant. Design/methodology/approach - A sample of 70 Jordanian listed companies is used in this monograph. A disclosure index checklist was constructed to measure FI information provided by the sample companies. In addition, a valuation model is employed to test the association between FID and market value. Findings - Although evidence is provided that FI information was value relevant over the two periods of investigation, the information supplied after the implementation of IFRS 7 was more strongly associated with market values. An analysis of the sub-components of FID reveals that the details about balance sheet, fair value and risk information matter when valuing equity. Overall, the results indicate that investors value FI-related information when making their equity pricing decisions. The result suggests that compliance with IFRS mandatory disclosure requirements does produce relevant financial statements. Research limitations/implications - The results of the current study have a number of implications for policy makers. First, they provide a great deal of insight for the IASB about the relevance of its standards to countries outside the western context. In addition, the findings provide valuable insights for policy makers in Jordan who are concerned about the implications of mandatory disclosures. Originality/value - The analysis of FID in developing countries in general, and in Jordan in particular, has been overlooked by the extant literature and therefore this study is the first of its kind to examine this research issue for a sample of Jordanian firms.

Purpose The main aim of this paper is to investigate Financial Instruments (FIs) disclosures provided by Jordanian listed companies under International Financial Reporting Standard No. 7 (IFRS 7) as compared to those supplied under International Accounting Standards (IAS) 30/32. Design/methodology/approach A sample of 82 Jordanian listed companies is used in this monograph. A disclosure index checklist was constructed to measure FI information provided by the sample companies. Findings The study finds that a larger number of Jordanian listed companies provided a greater level of FI-related information after IFRS 7 was implemented. Specifically, the sample firms provided 47 per cent of the disclosure index items after implementing IFRS 7 as compared to 30 per cent under IAS 30/32. In addition, the industrial analysis of FI disclosure revealed that the highest level of disclosure was provided by firms in the banking sector over the two periods; these companies disclosed 44 per cent of FI-related items pre-IFRS 7 and 69 per cent of items post-IFRS 7. Moreover, the industrial analysis of FI disclosure pre-and post-implementation of IFRS 7 revealed specific aspects of usefulness. In particular, some components of FI disclosure (Balance Sheet and Fair Value) showed no significant differences within and across sectors post the implementation of IFRS 7, suggesting that the new standard may have enhanced the comparability of such information. Research limitations/implications The results provide timely findings to Jordanian authorities who may be trying to evaluate the current reforms adopted; stringent enforcement mechanisms are needed to ensure full compliance with accounting standards. However, the present investigation was conducted on a single nation (Jordan); the circumstances in Jordan gave rise to the importance of the current study. A cross-country comparative analysis is needed in order to examine the application of IFRS 7 in a developing country context. Practical implications The results of the current study have a number of implications for policymakers. First, they provide a great deal of insight for the International Accounting Standards Board about the relevance of its standards to countries outside the Western context. In addition, the findings provide valuable insights for policymakers in Jordan who are concerned about the implications of mandatory disclosures. Originality/value The analysis of FI disclosure in developing countries in general, and in Jordan in particular has been overlooked by the extant literature and therefore this study is the first of its kind to examine this research issue for a sample of Jordanian firms.

This article investigates whether economic variables have explanatory power for share returns in South Asian stock markets. In particular, using data for four South Asian emerging stock markets over the period 1998-2012, the article examines the influence of a selection of local, regional and global economic variables in explaining equity returns; most previous studies that have examined this issue have tended to focus on only local and/or global factors. Important factors are identified by distilling the macroeconomic variables into principal components. Economic activities, real interest rates, real exchange rates and the trade balance represent local factors. Regional factors are represented by inter regional trade and regional economic activity while global factors are represented by world financial asset returns and world economic activity. The vector autoregression results suggest that the South Asian markets examined are not efficient. Both local and regional factors can directly and indirectly explain Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Sri Lankan stock returns while the lagged returns of the Pakistani stock market and world economic activity can explain Indian stock returns.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the technical methods that investors in the Kuwait Stock Exchange use to evaluate ordinary shares. The research examines the extent of investors' use of technical analysis, and the technical indicators and the sources of technical information employed by investors. Further, it compares the valuation methods and the sources of information employed by Kuwaiti investors with those used by investors in other developed and emerging stock markets.Design/methodology/approachA semi‐structured questionnaire guided the interviews with institutional investors, technical analysts and investment analysts in Kuwait.FindingsTechnical analysis is commonly used among research participants, particularly when timing their entry and exit points. The participants use a mixture of trend and pattern seeking; the Moving Average Rule was heavily used in the market but the Filter Rule Approach was not. Interviewees believed that investors did not have complete information about Kuwaiti quoted companies. Investors in Kuwait behave like their counterparts in other developed and emerging stock markets; fundamental analysis is considered the main valuation method among research participants, while technical and risk analyses were ranked second and third, respectively.Practical implicationsInterviewees in Kuwait paid more attention to technical analysis than did investors in developed countries; technical analysts looked at a company's fundamentals before they consulted graphs when deciding to purchase ordinary shares. Further, chartists followed trades of large investors to make profits. This topic needs to be investigated in emerging markets because these markets may be inefficient; trends and patterns may characterise the data from these markets and practitioners may use these techniques to exploit such patterns in returns. Further, the findings in this study may aid the regulators of these markets in their development of a framework that could improve efficiency by increasing the level of disclosure and transparency among listed firms.Originality/valueThis is one of the first studies in Kuwait to report the views of technical analysts and institutional investors about technical approaches to equity investment that are used in the market. Most studies on this topic have been conducted in developed stock markets. The current study considers the case for an emerging stock market, which is important in the Gulf and Middle East region. Further, access to technical analysts has been limited in prior research but this was not an issue in the current investigation.