Journal of Business & Financial Affairs

This study is the first to investigate the relationship between firm-level shareholder protections and abnormal returns on insider trading. We thereby extend the few studies that have analysed insider trading from a shareholder protection perspective. The novelty of this study is its concentration on firm-level shareholder protection. Our results show that firmlevel shareholder protections have a significantly positive impact on abnormal returns on insider purchases, indicating that firm-level shareholder protection is more influential than country-level shareholder protection. We found support that the information content hypothesis is valid for explanation of abnormal return on insider trading, which is in line with earlier studies. This result is an indication that insider purchases in firms that have adopt strict corporate governance rules are viewed by the market as trustworthy leading to positive market reactions on insider trading.

According to the contemporary political and economic conditions, there is still an existing possibility for Greece to exit the Euro zone. If this scenario comes true, it will further decrease FYROM imports from Greece, as this will most probably result in the return of the Drachma with an assumed 50% devaluation to the Euro. On the other hand, FYROM exports Greece will become equally more expensive. The economic crisis which currently trembles our neighbour Greece has emerged as a new variable in the prediction and planning of economic activity along with main economic variables in the Macedonian economy. Analysis of the economic and trade relations between Greece and FYROM shows a steady decline during the last five years. FYROM exports to Greece in the first quarter of 2012 are at the lowest level in the history of trade relations between the two countries, at €39m. Even worse is that the coverage of imports from Greece with exports from FYROM is only 25.2 basis points, which is also at the lowest historical level. This is a clear indication that FYROM is losing Greece, neighbouring country and EU member, as a significant business partner. This paper is trying to determine the potential effects on Macedonia economy due to the contemporary Greek crisis, taking into consideration that our neighbour is one of the largest investors and trading partners of FYROM.

This paper investigates the operational risk, fund performance and investor protection in the seven years subsequent to the 2001 liberalisation of the Chinese open-end funds market. The empirical results indicate that the fund type and fund manager’s qualification are positively associated with selecting the Big 4 auditing firms, while the size and profitability of open-end funds are not. The results also indicate that the open-end funds audited by the Big 4 firms do not outperform the funds audited by non-Big 4 firms.

This study uses repeated experiment to explore the possible reasons of home-bias investment. The results indicated that the reasons for home-bias investment are information asymmetry or familiarity, resulting in over-investment in Taiwanese investment vehicles. The level of home-bias investment changed with the level of information asymmetry changes. A significant difference in home-bias investment was observed for different levels of education, investment experience, age, annual income and annual investment. Moreover, the difference in investment ratio did not change based on different levels of information asymmetry.