Procedia Economics and Finance最新文献

Traditionally, the primary objective of financial management is known as the maximization of shareholder wealth. Companies are also responsible for the interests of stakeholders and society at large. The concept which describes this new approach is called as “Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR). It is an interdisciplinary and multidimensional concept. Companies disclose their CSR activities through annual reports or a special CSR report. Measurement of social performance is a subjective and judgmental issue, and one of the methods for this purpose is to score companies based on their CSR disclosures. The level and quality of CSR disclosures depend on several factors. We search for the relationship between CSR disclosure scores and corporate governance related bank characteristics by considering five dimensions of CSR. We find out that stock exchange listing, ownership and bank type influence the CSR disclosure of banks.

Corporate governance practices have been a concerned issue by many Asian countries after the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 including Malaysia. Due to the crisis, Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance (MCCG) has been introduced as part of the Bursa Malaysia (BMB) listing rules. This study hence focuses on corporate governance practices among Top 100 public listed companies in Bursa Malaysia and the relationship between corporate governance practices with firm performance. Two corporate governance's indicators (Board size and Board Independence) were chosen in testing the hypothesized relationship between corporate governance practices with firm performance, which was measured by return on asset (ROA) and return on equity (ROE). Descriptive and correlation analysis were used to examine the hypotheses in this study. The result showed that board size has significantly weak negative relationship with ROA but it was found to be insignificant to ROE. The other finding indicated that there was no relationship between board independence and firm performance. This study provide useful information for policy makers or regulators in improving the corporate governance policies in the future and also helps in increasing understanding on the relationship between corporate governance practices and firm's performance.

Good corporate governance (CG) has been widely linked to the corporate performance. Based on the traditional agency theory, maximising the shareholders’ value denotes the aim to gain better performance through profit maximisation. Taking from a different view, this study attempts to examine to which extent the companies with good CG scores will have good performance from an Islamic perspective (proxied by profit measurement). This study also intends to investigate whether the board attributes as internal governance mechanisms could exert significant influence towards a) overall corporate performance, and b) striving either for profit maximization or moderation. The data is gathered through conducting a content analysis of corporate annual reports of top 50 largest companies (which ranked based on good CG performance). The empirical results indicate that those directors who hold professional accounting qualification are statistically associated with lower total revenues. However, none of the directors’ attributes appears to have significant association with the four proxies of corporate performance. The findings further provide evidence that all board attributes fail to prove their significant influence on the profit moderation as well as profit maximization.

The present thesis aims at investigating the macroeconomic impact of economic freedom on foreign direct investments inflows in both global and regional panel analysis concerning 156 countries through the periods of 1995-2013. Unlike existing literature, it includes often neglected nations such as Fragile and Conflict-Affected states, Sub-Saharan, Oceania, and Post-Soviet countries. This present study investigates not only the global impact of economic freedom on FDI inflows but also makes regional analysis. The paper finds a positive impact of economic freedom on FDI under fixed-effects model in global case where a unit change in economic freedom scales FDI inflows up to 0.0835 units. More specifically, all 9 regions also refer to positive and significant impact of economic freedom on FDI. The highest impact is recorded in European countries, whereas the lowest ones are documented in Oceania and Fragile-Conflict affected states.

The prevention of work-related injury and illness is of crucial importance to employees, industry and society as a whole. Corporate safety culture is now generally accepted as having a strong influence over workplace accidents and injuries. After implementation of Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) in the organization, there have been an improvement in term of safety in the workplace. However, there are still some cases of accident being reported even after the organizations’ management provided training, introducing stricter rules and regulation regarding safety, and provides proper equipment to employee. Hence, the study is carried out in order to examine the effect of employees’ attitude and subjective norm toward safety culture behaviour in organization. The study was conducted in manufacturing service industry in Malaysia, and data collection was done at Flextronics Penang Sdn Bhd, a company in the northern part of Malaysia. Data were collected through 196 survey questionnaires distributed to operators (90 respondents), technician (52 respondents) and engineer (27 respondents) in Flextronics Penang Sdn Bhd. The results showed that safety culture behaviour is significantly influenced by employee's attitude and subjective norm. Based on the findings, several recommendations are being put forward in order to improve the safety culture behaviour among employees in the organization. For future research in the same area, it is being recommended to include management commitment, leadership, safety education, and training under scrutiny in order to understand its relationship with safety culture behaviour among employees.

The aim of this paper is to provide empirical evidences of the relationships between the financial abilities towards in the financial statement to the earnings management level (EM) among of public sector companies on Bursa Malaysia from year 2001 until 2012. Primarily, the initial samples comprised 375 selected public listed companies with 4500 firm-years observation. From the samples, those companies who have not implied with the earnings management activities was excluded as a sample of the study. Thus, the final sample of this study was comprises 3971 firm-years observation. The study was adopted the Kothari Model as a measurement model for earnings management level in the business organization. Meanwhile, the findings of this study indicated significant relationships between earnings ability (EAB), financial structure's ability (FSAB), debt repaying ability (DRAB) and non-financial factors (NFF) towards the earnings management level (EM) in the business organization. Therefore, these evidences can be used as new financial mechanisms to potential and existing stakeholders in order to assist them for any decision making purposes.

Requested and sponsored by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), this study was carried to evaluate the implementation plan of the TAT sustainable tourism practice (the 7 Greens Concept) to Pai District, Mae Hong Son Province. Assessment tools included a questionnaire for domestic tourists visiting Pai (n = 200) and small tourism related business interview (n=15). Indicators applied to evaluate the outcomes from the implementation of 7 Greens Concept through tourists’ questionnaire were structured in a meeting by the Director of the TAT Regional and Provincial Sectors of 20 persons. The results showed that the domestic tourists visiting Pai felt that tourism environments in Pai did not reach their expectation. Interviewees who are small tourism related business in Pai recognized that the TAT promoting conservation activities for sustainable tourism but only a few of them involved in the implementation of the activities.

Multiple linear regression model was employed to model child under age of five mortality rate and related factors in Asia of year 2010. Data analysis was carried out to find factors which influence the child mortality in Asia. Correlation analysis was done to check on the relationship among all the variables, as well as to identify the problem of multicollinearity in the data. Having fitted multiple linear regression, it was found that mortality rate of children under age of five in Asia countries are significantly influenced by percentage of case detection for all forms of tuberculosis, number of reported deaths on measles, number of population using an improved drinking water source, and number of birth trauma reported. Among those variable, it was identified that number of population using an improved drinking water source is the most important factor.

Currently, in the competitive Islamic financial system, mudarabah (profit sharing) is seen as an alternative mechanism in financing techniques that differentiate it from the conventional financing that consist interest mechanism. Since its introduction, mudarabah (profit sharing) has gone through various evolution to fulfill the needs of the fast-developing Islamic financial market. However, in the current Islamic financial system, mudarabah (profit sharing) has become less preferable compared to Islamic debt financing instruments such as murabahah and bai’ bithaman ajil. This is caused by the existence of asymmetric information that continuously presents in mudarabah (profit sharing) contracts and creates problems of adverse selection and moral hazard. Due to this, mudarabah (profit sharing) has declined it importance as a financing vehicle. Therefore, the objectives of this study are twofolds, first, to examine the thought and evolution of mudarabah (profit sharing) from the viewpoints of classical and contemporary Islamic scholars and second, to evaluate the asymmetric information that continuously exist in this type of contract.

The main goal of this research is to estimate the effect of bank-based and market-based financial systems on income distribution using the data of 15 developed and developing countries. For this purpose, firstly the type of financial system for selected countries was determined. Then the model of research was estimated applying the FMOLS method. In the next step, using OLS method in panel data, the effect of the type of financial system on income distribution of the two groups of developed and developing countries was estimated in order to come up with a better conclusion. The results indicated that the type of financial system affects income distribution. Market-based financial system leads to better income distribution in developed countries, while bank-based financial system reduces income inequality in developing countries.