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This study aims at finding the sources from which retail investors’ overconfidence bias develop. Based on empirical review of the relevant literature, it finds that demography; training, investment knowledge and skills; past experiences and successes/failures and information are the key sourcedrivers of overconfidence at varied proportions under different situations. The stylized facts of these sources are then analyzed and conclusions drawn. The results show that demography, skills along with experience drive trading volume of the investors which in turn impact their successes/failures. The male investors being active traders and aggressive in regard to riskattitude and risktaking abilities are much more overconfident that their female counterparts subject to their age. The experienced investors with a proper educational background and continuous learning exercises by active trading are much more balanced than their inexperienced and younger peers. The income status drives them further. All these demographic characteristics are further augmented by their culture and personality traits. The balanced approach in gathering, evaluation and interpretation of information signals including market/stock returns make them precise and perfect. Generally higher volume of information enhances investors’ overconfidence, but the quality and strength of these do matter.

Key Words: Overconfidence; Retail investors; Demography; Investing experiences.

JEL Classification: G4; G41

This study aims at providing a more specific insight into the determining of earnings and earning differentials of those who ogrinated from the Mekong River Delta region of Vietnam (called MRD migrants) and also local workers by using the survey data from some urban destinations in the Southern cities. In examining the earnings, empirical models such as standard Mincer and expanded Mincer equations were applied to test the human capital theory that relates to the crucial role of human capital in improving individual’s earnings. In addition, several important variables including gender, employment, and migration status were also incorporated in the expanded Mincer equation in order to control ability bias among individuals that may influence the earnings. The estimated results demonstrate that education and job experience are two key factors that not only contribute positively to an improvement of living standard for general laborers, but also explain inequality in earnings among groups of laborers on the labor market.

Keywords: migrants, earnings, Mekong River Delta, urban destination.

Recently, Malawi, has taken initiatives aimed at increasing financial inclusion so as to achieve faster inclusive economic growth. In order to measure financial inclusion at the household level it is important to use an efficient tool or approach. In the study we measured the reliability of the three indices measuring financial inclusion namely, weighted average method, principle component analysis and multiple correspondence analysis. The Cronbach alpha value was used to test the reliability i.e. internal consistency of each of the three indices. The results were 0.453 for the weighted average method; 0.796 for the principal component method and 0.805 for the multiple correspondence analysis. According to the reliability criteria, the multiple correspondence analysis had good results, while the principle component analysis had acceptable reliability. The most widely used method of weighted average method produced unacceptable results. The implication of these results suggest that if one is interested in examining important factor affection financial inclusion at household level, they are advised to use the multiple correspondence analysis.

Keywords: Financial Inclusion;Weighted Average;Principal Component Analysis; Multiple Correspondence Analysis; Probit Analysis.

JEL Classification: G23

How microfinance bank funding drives the performance of smallscale agribusiness enterprises, has remained significantly unclear to development agencies.This study assessed the performance indicators of small scale agribusinesses that were funded by microfinance bank credit and its implications for rural enterprise development in Nigeria. A multistage sampling procedure and Yamanes formula were applied to determine the sample size of 155. Descriptive and inferential statistical tools were applied to analyze the collected data. The result shows that 31% of small scale agribusiness firms accessed microfinance bank services. The result showed that banks’ capacity to extend loans, willingness to borrow, ability to repay and profitability of small scale agribusiness significantly correlated with the level of access to credit by qualified loan applicants that operated small scale agribusiness enterprises. We found sufficient evidence to conclude that micro finance banks’ capacity to supply financial services to small scale agribusiness enterprises was grossly inadequate. We recommended that the lending capacity of microfinance banks should be enhanced by the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Keywords: Financial service capacity, access to credit, smallscale agribusiness, microfinance banks.

In this era of competition, it is no longer acceptable from the workforce to violate the norms of the work organization and being involved in destructive deviance. The consistent occurrence of destructive deviance not only affects individual performance, but it also deteriorates the performance of the organization as a whole. It is imperative for managers to know how to eliminate or at least mitigate the occurrence of such harmful behavior in the organization environment. Therefore, this study empirically examined the relationship between organizational justice and deviant workplace behavior by taking organizational cynicism as mediator. The study used equity theory and social exchange theory for the theoretical foundation. The population for the study consists of public sector employees of Pakistan. The study has three variables for which a single questionnaire has been employed. Data has been analyzed through correlation and regression analysis. Results revealed that: 1) organizational justice and deviant workplace behavior are negatively and significantly correlated; 2) organizational justice has a significant and negative correlation with organizational cynicism; 3) deviant workplace behavior has a significant and positive correlation with organizational cynicism; and 4) the organizational cynicism acts as a partial mediator between organizational justice and workplace deviance. It is concluded that organizational justice issues need to be tackled carefully in order to increase the morale of employees and to reduce the recurrence of negative behaviors. Management should keep in mind the concept of justice while developing policies and procedures for resources and rewards allocation.

Keywords: Organizational justice, workplace deviance, organizational cynicism, public sector of Pakistan.

Expenditure is the total sum of money spend on consumption and other goods by and individual. Credit is the small amount of money given to the poor to start a small business or to expand an existing one. The main aim of this study is to ascertain the contributionof credit, savings and supervision on consumption expenditure of individual households of the beneficiaries in Northeast Nigeria. The study employed an intensive research design over an extensive period of time, a 24 weekly visit, for a period of 6 months, that 24 x 87 making a total of 2,088 observations. The population for this study consisted of a sample of 87 respondents, which involved 53 beneficiaries of the Development Exchange Centre microcredit institution and 34 nonbeneficiaries in Bauchi state, Northeast Nigeria. Stratified random sampling was employed in selecting the respondents for the study. Quantitative data were collected by the use of interview questionnaire. The data was processed using Stata. Ordinary Least Square was used to determine whether a group of variables together could predict a given dependent variable as method of data analysis. Mean difference between the beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries individual households expenditure was determined, to assessed the effect of credit, saving and supervision on expenditure. The three independent variables considered in this study were relevant and positively significant in explaining the contribution of credit, savings and supervision on expenditure. The study discovered that the mean analysis showed a highly significant difference in the mean value of the beneficiaries as compared to the nonbeneficiaries on expenditure of the individual households. The study concluded that microfinance access to the individual households could increase expenditure and hence, reduce poverty among the poor.

Keywords: Beneficiary, ConsumptionExpenditure, Household, Microfinance, Nonbeneficiary.

The present study aimed to investigate the effects of corporate ownership structures on audit risk among firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). The study population consists of 90 firms listed on TSE over an eight year period between 2010 and 2017. Following Salehi et al. (2017), we classified corporate ownership structures into four groups including institutional, managerial, family, and family management ownership. The statistical model used in this study is a multivariate regression model; besides, the statistical technique used to test the hypotheses is a panel data.Our findings show a negative association between institutional owners and audit risk. Iranian institutional owners actually because of their long term investment tend to spend resources to oversee the management, which reduces agency problems. Contrary to convergenceofinterests theory, our result indicates there is a positive relationship between managerial ownership and audit risk. Finally, we find that family ownership due to the separation of ownership from its management results in increased audit risk, whereas firms with family management owners management decrease the agency problems.

Keywords: Institutional ownership, Managerial ownership, Family ownership, Family management ownership, Audit risk.

The annual budget in Nigeria is meant to run from January to December each year. However, delay in budget approval has become a yearly routine resulting in significant budget variance often. Thus, the appropriation bill of the year 2020 was signed into law in the first week of the year to address the situation but was greeted with a shock from Coronavirus pandemic ravaging the whole world including Nigeria. The study, therefore, examined the causal relationship between budget variance and fiscal policy of government with the use of Vector Autoregressive (VAR) technique. The findings revealed that budget variance in Nigeria was as a result of distorted and inconsistent policy thrust of government in recent time. Nigerian Government should ensure that both capital and recurrent expenditure are effectively managed in such a way that it will drastically reduce (if not completely eliminated) variances and discrepancies occurring in the nation’s budget.

Keywords: Budget variance, fiscal policy, expenditure, Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Gradual transformation of commodity markets in India has been of great importance for both the country’s overall economic distribution and its linkages with financial sector. Commodity futures, being an extraordinary hedging and risk management instrument provide efficient portfolio management benefits which may enhance investors returns. So, taking into consideration the significance of Gold in India and its volatility the study is conducted to analyze the efficiency of Gold futures in discovering price in spot market. The study is carried on using different econometric tools like ADF, Johansen’s Cointegration and Granger Causality test. Daily closing prices of gold in futures and spot market are taken for the study from the official website of MCX from January 2016 to December 2018. The empirical results revealed that i) the futures and spot prices of Gold are I(1) and cointegrated in the long run, ii) there is a unidirectional flow of information from futures market to spot market for Gold in maximum contracts and iii) Gold futures market is efficient in discovering price in spot market. This present piece of work will be useful to the investors to diversify their positional risk with the proper use of gold futures market as well as to research scholars for conducting further studies in this area.

Keywords: Commodity Futures, Gold Futures, Price Discovery, Efficiency.

JEL Code: G14

Propensity Score Matching (PSM) measures the impact of treatment of a phenomenon on the treated group that possesses different characteristics. The general objective of the study is to assess the impact of Microfinance loan on Poverty alleviation in South West Nigeria. The result revealed that microfinance loan has favourable contributions to poverty alleviation in the study area but there is still need for government aid. Government should support the MFIs with funds that would be disbursed at concessionary interest rates. Availability of more infrastructural facilities and more enabling environment would effectively spur the establishment of more MFIs in the rural areas.

Keywords: development finance, poverty reduction, microfinance, Propensity Score Matching.

In SouthEast Asian (SEA) economies of Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam, the recent economic growth has contributed to significant poverty reduction and led some countries to attain the rank of middle in ome economies. However, SEA’s economic growth has declined from 5.9% in 2018 to 5.1% in 2019 due to global trade conflicts and economic uncertainty. COVID-19 pandemic induced lockdowns have contracted the SEA’s economic growth by 0.1% in 2020, which is likely to rebound to 6.2% in 2021. COVID-19 pandemic shocks require a new development model to address the challenges and to reap the opportunities for building resilient economies. In this context, the micro, small, and mediumsized enterprises (MSMEs) can play a dominant role in economic recovery and global competitiveness of the SEA economies. Against above backdrop, the paper intends to analyze the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on MSMEs in SEA economies, the coping mechanisms adopted and the governments’ support measures to MSMEs and to draw policy implications for agile and resilient MSMEs in the region. On average, the MSMEs constituted about 97% of all enterprises, generated nearly 69% of employment and contributed around 41% of gross domestic product in SEA economies. Recent economic growth and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows have contributed immensely to the growth of MSMEs through improved labor productivity and global value chains. However, COVID-19 pandemic induced shocks have adversely impacted MSME growth due to adverse internal and external factors, which forced most MSMEs to adopt unsustainable coping mechanisms including business closures. Some SMEs adopted agile and resilient business strategies including switching to digital economy and survived the crisis. Governments of SEA countries have also announced fiscal and monetary measures to support MSMEs, which eased their financial situation temporarily. Therefore, MSMEs need robust policy support and new business model to achieve inclusive growth and economic integration along with global competitiveness in the context of the Industry 4.0, and FDI inflows.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic, Micro, small, and mediumsized enterprises, coping strategies, government measures, policy implications, SouthEast Asia