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The main objective of this paper is to identify the impacts of social globalisation comprised of personal contacts, information flows and cultural proximity to the financial and social efficiency of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs). This study had conducted two stages of analysis, in which the first stage is Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach and the second stage is multiple panel regression analysis under Generalized Least Square estimation method. The results exhibit that the overall MFIs operated in a relatively optimal scale during the period of the study. However, these MFIs were managerially inefficient in utilising their resources to achieve both social and financial efficiency. The results from panel regression analysis showed that only personal contacts exhibit a significant positive relationship with the financial efficiency of MFIs. This study could contribute new insights and implications to various parties, such as MFIs, policy makers, investors and researchers to improve the efficiency of MFIs.

Purpose – This research investigates the impact of environmental reporting policy based on evidence from levels of the debt maturity structure of non-financial firms listed on Bursa Malaysia i.e. the Malaysian Stock Exchange. In addition, further evaluation is performed on the ability of firms to adjust to target debt maturity levels based on the environmental disclosure policy. Design/methodology/approach – The research is conducted in the context of a developing country where the political and contracting costs of the economy tend to influence financial decisions. The selection of Malaysia as the focus of the research is based on it being characterised as a relationship-based economy. Therefore, incentives for environmental reporting policy would influence firms’ riskiness, perceived transparency levels as well as the ability to access capital markets. As a consequence of these characteristics, the research proposes a static and dynamic model in order to investigate the motivation for voluntary environmental disclosure based on debt maturity levels. Findings – Empirical results from modelling the determinants of debt maturity indicate that disclosure firms tend to opt for shorter debt maturity structures. Non-discloser firms’ motivation for opting for longer structures arises from potential liquidity risks. Furthermore, discloser firms are found to have lower levels of moral hazards as well as reduced potential for bankruptcy. Discloser firms’ motivation is further evidenced by the reduced potential for cash shortages highlighting lower levels of volatility. In addition, the dynamic regime switching model provides further justification for the environmental reporting policy where voluntary disclosers have enhanced ability to adjust to target debt maturity levels further validating the notion of voluntary reporting which is guided by firm riskiness and contracting costs. Originality/value – The findings from the research provide a direct measure of firms’ contracti

Purpose : Globalisation has influenced many countries, over the last few decades with financial globalisation and liberalisation bringing regulatory reforms in the banking sector. Thus, this study aims to fill a gap in the literature by examining the influence of globalisation on Islamic and conventional bank productivity in Southeast Asia. Design/methodology/approach : The sample comprised 155 banks (23 Islamic and 132 conventional) from 4 countries from 2008 to 2017. Panel data techniques will be used, together with data envelopment analysis (DEA)-based Malmquist productivity index (MPI), to investigate the impact of chosen main determinants on bank productivity. A panel regression analysis will be performed after generating the productivity index from the DEA-based MPI frontier. Findings : According to the findings, Islamic banks are statistically significantly more productive than conventional banks, and the findings of the t-test are corroborated by the findings of nonparametric tests. Furthermore, the findings of the panel regression model reveal that bank specific factors and macroeconomic variables are significant determinants to bank productivity. Surprisingly, the findings also show that the influence of social globalisation elements tends to be negatively related to conventional bank productivity. Originality/value : This study adds to the existing literature by bridging the globalisation gap in the productivity of the dual banking industry, particularly in the specific context of Southeast Asia, given that the area is representative of Islamic and finance globally.

Research background: Microfinance institutions (MFIs) play an important role in alleviating poverty. Thus, MFIs should be efficient in order to ensure that their objectives on social welfare and financial performance can be achieved by identifying the potential determinants, specifically on social globalisation. Purpose of the article: This paper examines the impacts of the social globalisation dimensions of interpersonal, informational, and cultural globalisations on the financial and social efficiency of MFIs. Methods: The data period covered the years 2011?2018; the data set consists of 176 MFIs from six Asian countries. The Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach was employed to examine the MFIs? efficiency levels. Generalised Least Square (GLS) regressions were used to analyse the impacts of social globalisation and other determinants towards the efficiency of MFIs. Findings and value added: Interpersonal globalisation had a significantly negative correlation with social efficiency, suggesting that increasing the number of foreigners in management intrudes on local managers? decisions. Informational globalisation had a significantly positive correlation with financial and social efficiency, which signifies that more information produces monopolistic profits in this industry. Finally, cultural globalisation had a positive correlation with social efficiency, demonstrating that a global trading culture improves the abilities and technological skills for labour development and enhances MFIs? social efficiency. In general, the Cobb Douglas Production theory explained the understanding of the impacts social globalisation has on MFI efficiency. Furthermore, the findings from this study could provide important scientific, practical gap and contribute new insights and implications to various parties. Firstly, governments or policymakers can establish effective national policies and strategies. Secondly, this study could support investors in monitoring and understanding

This study attempts to discover the impact of the limitation of a country’s governance on Islamic and conventional bank revenue efficiency by using data from the countries of three regions. Non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) employed to measure the bank revenue efficiency level. The applied method of estimation consists of pooled Ordinary Least Square (OLS), Fixed Effect Model (FEM), Random Effect Model (REM), and the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to examine the impact of country governance and other potential determinants on bank efficiency. This study finds out that the dimensions of voice and accountability positively influenced Islamic and conventional bank revenue efficiency, however, the political stability and absence of violence and control of corruption provided the negative relationship. Furthermore, other dimensions of regulatory quality, government effectiveness and rule of law significantly negative with the conventional bank revenue efficiency. Implications from the study allow the related parties to identify the significant dimensions of a country’s governance to the efficiency of the banks to ensure better bank performance.

This paper examines the effects of the lock-up period and shareholder retention ratio on the heterogeneity of investors beliefs regarding the true value of IPOs in the Malaysian IPO market. The relationship between the signalling variables and the first-day price range of IPOs is examined using a quantile regression (QR) technique. This study employs a sample of 377 IPOs issued between January 2000 and December 2015. The results show that shareholder retention ratio has a significant negative relationship with the first-day price range, while the lock-up period does not have a significant relationship with the first-day price range. This suggests that prospective investors acknowledge the importance of the shareholder retention ratio as a signal and use the information conveyed by this signal to evaluate the price of the listing firm’s IPO and to ensure that the current price reflects their beliefs and expectations of the firm in general and the issue price in particular. Finally, the lock-up in the Malaysian market serves as precautionary measure to guard the investors against after-market insiders’ actions.

This research investigate the impact of six dimensions of country governance to the price efficiency of Islamic and conventional banks. The empirical analysis is focused on the Islamic and conventional banks operating in the Bahrain, UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia countries. The data envelopment analysis (DEA) method applied to compute the revenue efficiency of Islamic and conventional banks. Then used the Multivariate Panel Regression Analysis with the Ordinary Least Square as an estimation method to investigate the potential determinants and the effect of country governance on the revenue efficiency. The empirical findings indicate that greater voice and accountability, political stability, regulatory quality, rule of law and control of corruption enhance the revenue efficiency of both Islamic and conventional banks. The dimension of government effectiveness exerts positive sign relationship with the banks revenue efficiency only on conventional banks.

The objective of this study is to examine the technical efficiency (TE) and the decomposition of pure technical efficiency (PTE) and scale efficiency (SE) of domestic and foreign Islamic banks from the selected Southeast Asian Countries. The sample comprised of 29 domestic and foreign Islamic banks from Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei over the period of 2006–2014. This study employ the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method to measure banks’ efficiency. In addition, the parametric (t-test) and non-parametric (Mann-Whitney [Wilcoxon] and Kruskall-Wallis) tests also performed to examine the difference in the efficiency of the foreign and domestic Islamic banks. The results indicate that the domestic Islamic banks have exhibited higher efficiency levels compared to their foreign bank peers. In addition, the empirical findings from this study seem to suggest that the domestic Islamic banks have exhibited a higher efficiency levels for all three efficiency measures and consistent with home field advantage theory. The findings of this study are expected to contribute significantly to the regulators or policymakers, Islamic banking itself, investors and existing knowledge on the operating performance of the Islamic banking sector.

The aim of this study is to examine the influence of macroeconomic factors on the wealth effects of international merger and acquisitions by Malaysian multinational companies (MNCs). There are three macroeconomics factors: foreign economic condition, gross national product (GNP) correlation between countries and the level of the economic development of a target country. A random sample of 165 international mergers and acquisitions by Malaysian bidding MNCs in 22 countries around the world in the period of 2000–2010 was recruited for this study. A negative relationship between the foreign economic condition and the wealth effect and a positive relationship between the level of economic development of target country and the wealth effect has been found through this study. This implies that the foreign economic condition and level of economic development of the target country significantly determine the value creation of the Malaysian cross-border acquisitions. Therefore, Malaysian MNCs, which intend to use the acquisition mode of entry as the way to venture abroad, should take into consideration these macroeconomic factors in order to increase their foreign investment value.

This study is motivated by three main study by Beretta and Bozzolan (2008), Bozzolan et al., (2009) and Wang and Hussainey (2013). Nevertheless, this study will extend their studies by specifically look into the quality effect of forward looking disclosure, stock return of the firm and proposing two moderating factors, namely ownership structure and corporate governance practices. Thus, objectives of this study are to investigate whether or not the disclosure, disclosure level, and disclosure quality of forward-looking information will significantly affect stock return of the firm. This study also proposed two moderating factors, namely corporate governance practices and ownership structure of the firm to ascertain whether these moderating factors can either weaken or strengthen the relationship between the disclosure quality of forwardlooking information and stock return of the firm. The sample in this study consists of 300 Malaysian public listed firms with the highest market capital in the Malaysian stock market from nine main industries listed on Bursa Malaysia in year 2013. Using modified abnormal return model, earnings-return model, and price model as valuation models to investigate the relationship between disclosure, disclosure level, and disclosure quality of forward-looking information on firm’s stock return, this study hypothesized that all of the disclosure effects will positive and significantly affects stock return of the firm. The proposed moderating factors are hypothesized to significantly moderate the relationship between disclosure quality of forward looking information and firm’s stock return. Based on cross sectional regression analysis, findings show that the disclosure and disclosure quality of forward looking information is positive and significantly related with firm’s stock return under earnings-return model. Corporate governance practices and ownership structure also play a significant role in moderating the relationship between disclosure

The objective of this study is to ascertain if the presence of institutional owner as second largest owner, the absence of CEO duality and the higher level of cash flow rights in the hand of ultimate owner, hereby referred to as moderating factors, help to improve the value relevance of earnings information in pyramid structure firms. The separation of cash flow rights and control rights in pyramid structure firms has entrenched the ultimate owner and provide them with opportunities to manipulate earnings information, which in turn reduce the value relevance of the earnings information reported. This study hypothesizes that the moderating factors identified will help to reduce the agency problem between ultimate owner and minority shareholder by reducing the opportunity of ultimate owner to manipulate earnings information, which in tum will increase the value relevance of earnings information in pyramid structure firms. The sample in this study consists of 153 pyramid structure firms from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines, where the identity of the ultimate owner is family ownership and the firms were originally assembled by Claessens et al. (2002) from 1992 to1997. Earnings-return model with the interaction between earnings information reported by pyramid structure firms and moderating factors is provided to show the effect of the factors on the earnings-return relationship in an attempt to measure the value relevance of earnings information reported. Positive earnings-return relationship and higher R2 indicate that the earnings information is value relevant and vice versa. Using panel data regression, the results show that the presence of all proposed moderating factors is significant to minimize and mitigate the negative effects of the structure based on higher R2 reported with positive earnings-return relationship. Thus, the moderating factors moderate the negative effects of pyramid structure firms and help to increase the low value relevance of ear