Volume 2

The aim of this research is to model the investment function at the level of the Euro zone. To achieve this main objective, we use and implement the structural equation modeling procedure for empirical analysis. Using this technique, the causal relationships established between investment and influencing factors are estimated and tested. Also, in the process of modeling structural equations, we examine empirical data sets related to the Euro area's Member States.

This study attempts to determine the impact of the reclassification on income smoothing practices by Islamic banks in Malaysia through loss provisions. It is well acknowledged that Islamic banks set up an allowance for loss provisions in order to absorb any future losses. However, alternative mechanisms, such as Profit Equalization Reserve (PER) and Investment Risk Reserve (IRR) instead of loss provisions, are used to smooth income. This study determines whether the exercise by Islamic banks in Malaysia to reclassify Islamic deposits to investment accounts after the enacted Islamic Financial Service Act (2013), may have caused unintended consequences in less profit payout to investment account holders. The results do not indicate any unintended consequences of less profit payout to investment account holders from the present exercise by the Islamic banks in Malaysia to distinguish Islamic deposits from investment accounts.

This paper sets out to investigate the impact of corporate governance on the banking sector performance. Precisely, it examined firstly, how each variant in the corporate governance structure discriminates against the performance of the banking sector and secondly whether the executive directors and non executive directors are associated negatively and significantly with non performing loans. To accomplish these objectives, the researchers employed discriminant analysis, correlation coefficient and the spearman rank correlation as an alternate method. The results of the analysis revealed that foreign ownership contributed about 187.77 percent of the total discriminant score for the function thereby propelling foreign ownership as the most discriminant ownership variable in banks performance and also implying that a bank s chance of belonging to the group of highly performing banks increases as its foreign ownership increases. The poor performance of the board ownership is not as severe as that of the institutional ownership and government ownership which made the poor and poorer contributions respectively. The results also show that both executive directors and non-executive directors are not significantly associated with non-performing loans. On the basis of these findings, the researchers recommend that the Central Bank of Nigeria in liaison with the Nigerian Deposit and Insurance Corporation should extend intensive surveillance on the role of the directors in the banking sector.

Our paper investigates the extent of capital market co-movements between three emerging markets Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland and three developed markets from the European Union – Austria, France and Germany. We test whether an increase in correlations between the six markets took place in recent years, as revealing higher integration of capital markets in the region. We find a statistically significant positive trend in cross-market correlations between 1999 and 2008, before the emergence of the global financial crisis. Movements in national stock markets are not fully synchronized, but increases in market volatilities lead to increases in cross-country correlations. There is a long-term relationship between some of these countries capital markets, and information is transmitted from one market to the other. Our findings confirm previous studies and lead to the conclusion that stock markets from Central and Eastern Europe became more integrated with the developed markets in European Union.