Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the Goods and Service Tax (GST) implementation on Malaysian stock market index. Design/methodology/approach – This study used daily closing prices of the Malaysian stock index and futures markets for the period ranging from June 2009 to November 2016. Empirical estimation is based on the generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (1, 1) model for pre- and post-announcement of the GST. Findings – Result shows that volatility of Malaysian stock market index increases in the post-announcement than in the pre-announcement of the GST which indicates that educative programs employed by the government before the GST announcement did not yield meaningful result. The volatility of the Malaysian stock market index is persistent during the GST announcement and highly persistent after the implementation. Noticeable increase in post-announcement is in support with the expectation of the market about GST policy in Malaysia. Practical implications – The finding of this study is consistent with expectation of the market that GST policy will increase the price of the goods and services and might reduce standard of living. This is supported by a noticeable increase in the volatility of the Malaysian stock market index in the post-announcement of GST which is empirically shown during the announcement and after the implementation of GST. Although the GST announcement could be classified as a scheduled announcement, unwillingness to accept the policy prevails in the market as shown by the increase in the market volatility. Originality/value – Past studies on Malaysian stock market index volatility focus on the impact of Asian and global financial crisis whereas this study examines the impact of the GST announcement and implementation on the volatility of the Malaysian stock market index.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to investigate the relationship between some characteristics of corporations including firm size, financial leverage, profitability, firm age and the type of industry with social responsibility disclosure of firms listed on Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE); and second, to study the association between the level of corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) and some of the audit variables such as audit fees, audit tenure and audit firm’ size. Design/methodology/approach – The study population consists of 125 firms listed on the TSE during the years 2010–2015. Following Salehi et al. (2017), content analysis is used to measure the level of social responsibility disclosure, and hypotheses are performed using multiple regression analysis and R software. Findings – The results represented that there is a positive significant relationship between a firm size and a firm age with the level of CSRD. However, there is a negative significant association between financial leverage and profitability with the level of CSRD. Given that CSRD is different among various industries and the type of industry can be an influential factor in CSRD, an industry type’ variable in the fourth hypothesis is of a type of index variable and has eight levels, of which the first level is ranked as the base level. Our findings showed that the level of CSRD at industries of machinery and appliances, production of metal products, food and beverage products, and textiles is lower than the baseline level (pharmacy). Nevertheless, companies in the fifth industry (mineral products) have a higher level of CSRD in comparison with the pharmacy industry. Moreover, the authors find that there is a significant positive connection between audit fees and CSRD. This implies that Iranian managers in an inflationary economy probably manage earnings when they provide more CSRDs, which leads to increase in the audit risk and audit fees. Practical implications – Needless to say, the findings of this paper will have practical implications for investors, auditors and other users of financial statements. First of all, this study will aware them of the fact that when a country faces economic sanctions and most of its companies are in financial strain investors should not consider the firms engaging in corporate social responsibility activities to behave morally and provide transparent financial reports. Second, the results will convince auditors to be conservative toward the firms that are financially distressed, for audit risk of them will be high. Thus, policymakers should be cautious concerning directors’ opportunistic actions and increase monitoring to enforce social obedience. Originality/value – The turning point of this research is related to the time period of research related to firms that have faced severe financial problems due to economic sanctions. In fact, the study revealed another aspect of CSRD that could have negative consequences when managers are in financial strain and take opportunistic actions.

To maintain the Philippines’ competitive edge in the trading of agricultural products, this study identifies factors that significantly influence the Philippines’ participation in the mango global value chain. The study employs a causal research design with panel regression analysis using pooled regression, a fixed effect model and a random effects model and determines the robustness of the models using the Hausman test. The resulting fixed effect model reveals that gross domestic product, remoteness and global competitiveness have a significant positive effect on gross exports and value-added, while being land-locked and bilateral distance have a significant negative effect. Among the identified variables, remoteness has the greatest influence. The resulting model is limited to the analysis of the Philippine mango global chain’s integration in terms of gross exports and value-added contribution to the economy of the country. The underlying factors not included in the model are not given emphasis. This study identifies the factors that correctly estimate the Philippines’ mango global integration. The policy recommendations, if implemented, can guarantee strong integration of Philippine mangoes in the global chain, which will facilitate the flow of factor payments in the economy, thereby raising the standard of living of Philippine citizens and creating more social protection for the Philippine people. Previous studies have been conducted describing the Philippine global value chain integration, but these studies are limited in that they use descriptive analysis and did not identify the factor/s that will improve the mango global value chain’s integration.

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