In this study, we examine how the 2008-2009 Global Crisis has affected the informal payments/gifts paid by retailers in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. We look at the overall incidence of bribes, the incidence of bribes in customs/imports, the incidence of bribes in courts, and the incidence of bribes in tax payments. We compare the crisis period to the post-crisis period and found that these firms believed that the incidence of bribes went down significantly after the crisis ended. When we differentiate the retailers with respect to size, structure, legal form, gender of the owners, gender of the top manager, and whether or not they held an international quality certification, we found that, the results hold for all classifications of retailers. When we go into more detail and examine the incidence of bribes in customs/imports, courts, and taxes/tax collection, we found that the respondents saw a significant drop in the incidence of bribes in all areas after the crisis ended. However, our results show that, for bribes in customs/imports, the results do not hold for some of the classifications (i.e. medium-sized and the largest small firms, the firms that are part of a larger firm, the shareholding firms trading in the market, the partnerships, and the firms with an internationally recognized quality certification). For bribes in courts, the results do not hold for the largest small firms and the partnerships. For bribes in taxes/tax collection, the results do not hold for the partnerships and the firms with a quality certification. Our findings are consistent with the low rankings of these countries in Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception Index data. Our findings are also consistent with previous studies’ findings that document high-levels of corruption in developing (or less developed) nations.

This paper addresses the perceived more tolerant Shariah-screening criteria by the Securities Commission of Malaysia (SCM). Recently, in 2013, SCM introduced the "two-tier" screening process of the stocks traded on Bursa Malaysia. Despite this revision, the two-tier process is seen as being less stringent than the Shariahscreening process of e.g. Dow Jones and MSCI. Such perception may affect the credibility of the SCM in determining Shariah-compliant securities compared to international standards. Proponents of SCM screening criteria argue that since Shariah screening in Malaysia only includes Malaysian listed stocks, more rigid screening process may limit the list of investible stocks, and may further restrict the benefits of diversification, i.e. one may not be able to form efficient portfolios or achieve appropriate risk-return portfolios while complying with the Shariah principles. This paper argues that the justification for the less-stringent screening process adopted by the SCM does not seem to be corroborated by theoretical or portfolio diversification studies, and evidence from the socially-responsible investing and Shariah-compliant empirical findings.

In this study, using a widely available market liquidity measure, the "turnover ratio", the authors test for market liquidity contagion during the four financial crises that occurred between 1997 and 1999: The Thai crisis, the Hong Kong crisis, the Russian crisis, and the Brazilian crisis. It is found that while the liquidity levels decreased in approximately half of the sample markets, in the remaining half, the liquidity levels actually improved. The Granger causality tests show that while there is almost no evidence of causality (in both directions) before each crisis, during each crisis, approximately half of the pairwise tests were significant. The results show that most of these causalities are reverse feedback effects from the non-crisis-origin markets to the crisis-origin market. Therefore, it is concluded that the more crucial phenomenon during these crises is the "reverse feedback effects" rather than the liquidity contagion itself.

We examine the impact of the 2008-2009 Crisis on two dimensions of manufacturing firms in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, i.e., receivables collection (whether the customers pay after the delivery rather than before or on the date of delivery) and financing of manufacturing firms’ fixed asset purchases (what type of financing they used before and after the 2008-2009 Crisis). We use the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS), i.e., BEEPS IV and BEEPS V data to represent the pre-Crisis and post-Crisis periods respectively. Our analysis indicates that the percentage of purchases paid by the customers of the manufacturing firms significantly decline from the pre-Crisis to the post-Crisis period. This finding suggests that manufacturing firms tighten their payment policies and are not as lenient with their customers post-Crisis. In addition, we find that the percentage of manufacturing firms’ fixed asset purchases paid for by internal financing significantly increases, whereas the percentage of fixed asset purchases paid for by owner’s contribution and supplier credit significantly decline post-Crisis. These findings suggest that as a result of the 2008-2009 Crisis, manufacturing firms in these countries seem to rely more on internal funding which may be due to tighter availability of external sources or drainage of shareholders funds (not enough cash) post-Crisis.