A closed-end fund, known as an investment trust in the UK and closed-end fund in the US, is a collective investment company that invests in shares of other companies. This study attempts to describe and explain the persistence of the excess discount return on UK investment trusts and US...

Britain has the most active and developed Islamic banking sector in the European Union. This sector is set to grow with both Islamic and non-Islamic banks now offering a range of Sharia compliant products. However, are these banks meeting the service quality needs of their customers? Previous...

Hungary was the first transition economy to complete the process of privatisating state banks. This article outlines this process in the light of the economic and financial pressures after 1989, which had severely weakened the financial condition of these banks. It describes the ways in which...

Based on the belief that it is behaviour which constitutes risk rather than procedures, the paper focuses on the awareness of behavioural aspects in risk management techniques and the consequences that arise out of this awareness. It questions the traditional thinking that risk management is...

This paper examines the determinants of financial derivatives use in the United Kingdom life insurance industry. We estimate a probit regression model and a Heckman two-stage sample selection regression model using a sample of eighty-eight U.K. life insurers in 1995. Our results indicate that...

This study estimates a variable cost model of the UK water industry. From this variable cost function, estimates of economies of scale and economies of capital utilisation and capacity utilisation are made. The data used in the study consists of 20 English and Welsh water companies. The results...

This study examines the definition of the UK deposit savings account market. A testing procedure is used to ascertain if the law of one price and the assumption of a unified national market may or may not be rejected. The existing UK and European literature on the definition of financial...

Systems theory and agency theory were employed as the theoretical bases for a study of lobbying and the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) during the years of the Core Standards Programme, 1993-98. External parties made use of formal and informal channels to lobby the IASC. The...

Some twenty years ago, research was conducted by the author into the investment motivations of a sample of small firms in the south of England. The results were published in the International Small Business Journal 1984. This research has been updated between 1999 and 2002. The results were...

Based on the belief that it is behaviour which constitutes risk rather than procedures, the paper focuses on the awareness of behavioural aspects in risk management techniques and the consequences that arise out of this awareness. It questions the traditional thinking that risk management is...