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This paper aims to review the relevant forensic accounting research (FAR) around the world and suggests avenues for future research in forensic accounting.

The study used the thematic and systematic literature review methodology to analyse the existing literature in FAR.

The major thematic areas in the literature are fraud motivation, fraud consequences, fraud detection using forensic accounting techniques, forensic accounting theory, forensic accounting skills, forensic accounting education and forensic accounting jobs. The quantity of FAR is relatively small compared to the quantity of research in other accounting specializations. FAR is well developed in the USA and Canada and is less developed in Europe, Oceania and Asia. There is high interest in FAR in African countries. There is a relatively low global interest in internet information about “forensic accounting research” compared to global interest in other forensic accounting topics. Areas for future research include the role of the environment, digitalization, religiosity and sustainable development in forensic accounting.

FAR around the world is lopsided, as some regions have more advanced FAR compared to other regions. There is a need for even development of FAR across all regions and a need to publicize the outputs of FAR to a larger audience to increase people’s interest in forensic accounting.

The study extends the literature by presenting a rigorous thematic and systematic review of the existing literature. It highlights the depth of FAR, the major thematic areas, the benefits of FAR to society and the geographical reach of existing FAR.

We investigate the impact of private credit expansion and contraction on the unemployment rate in Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) countries.

Credit expansion and contraction are measured using a three-level criterion. The fixed effect panel regression model was used to estimate the impact of private credit contraction and expansion on the unemployment rate in ECOWAS countries.

Private credit contraction significantly increases the unemployment rate in ECOWAS countries. Private credit expansion does not have a significant effect on the unemployment rate. Real GDP growth has a significant negative effect on the unemployment rate which supports the prediction of the Okun’s Law while the inflation rate has a positive and insignificant effect on the rate of unemployment in ECOWAS countries which contradicts the prediction of the Phillips curve.

Policymakers in ECOWAS countries need to be cautious when introducing policies that lead to private credit contraction as it could increase unemployment. Policymakers in ECOWAS countries should also find the “threshold” below which private credit contraction will worsen the unemployment rate and introduce policy measures to ensure that private credit contraction does not fall below the threshold.

The literature has not examined the factors leading to tight labor markets or unemployment in West African countries.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-12-2023-0939.

The study investigates the impact of financial inclusion, financial stability, bank nonperforming loans, inflation, macroeconomic management quality and the unemployment rate on economic growth in Nigeria.

The data are analyzed using the ordinary least squares regression, generalized linear model regression, robust least squares regression and the quantile regression methods. The sample period is from 2007 to 2022.

Financial inclusion, inflation rate and macroeconomic management quality are significant determinants of economic growth in Nigeria. Bank nonperforming loans, unemployment rate, international trade and climate change have an insignificant effect on economic growth in Nigeria. Also, financial inclusion, inflation rate, financial stability, macroeconomic management quality and the unemployment rate are significant determinants of economic growth in good economic years in Nigeria.

The well-known catalysts of economic growth, such as financial inclusion and financial stability, are not positive catalysts of economic growth in Nigeria during good economic years. Therefore, it is recommended that policymakers should find the right level of financial inclusion, financial stability and unemployment that stimulate economic growth in Nigeria.

This study examines some determinants of economic growth in Nigeria which have not been examined in the existing literature.

This study aims to examine the effect of financial inclusion on bank stability, and the effect of bank stability on financial inclusion from 2011 to 2020.

This study analyses 33 countries which are divided into Asian countries, African countries, European countries and countries in the region of the Americas and using the panel regression method.

The analysis for the impact of financial inclusion on bank stability shows that high levels of financial inclusion have a significant positive impact on bank stability. The regional results show that financial inclusion improves bank stability in African countries and in countries in the region of the Americas while financial inclusion impairs bank stability in European countries. The analysis for the impact of bank stability on financial inclusion shows that bank stability has a significant effect on financial inclusion. The regional analysis shows that greater bank stability decreases financial inclusion in European and African countries while greater bank stability increases financial inclusion in countries in the Americas region. The results suggest that the effect of financial inclusion on bank stability, and the effect of bank stability on financial inclusion, depends on how financial inclusion and bank stability are measured and the region examined.

Existing studies have not examined the effect of financial inclusion on capital-based measures of bank stability and have not examined the effect of capital-based measures of bank stability on the level of financial inclusion.

This study examines the impact of monetary and fiscal policy on carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from fossil fuel energy consumption. The study extends the literature by linking monetary and fiscal policy to climate action for achieving the net zero emissions goal.

In the empirical analysis, the monetary policy indicator is the lending interest rate, the fiscal policy indicator is the tax revenue to GDP ratio while CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel energy consumption is the CO₂ emissions indicator.

Contractionary monetary and fiscal policy jointly reduce CO₂ emissions in the regions of the Americas and Africa. Contractionary monetary and fiscal policy combined with higher renewable energy consumption jointly reduce CO₂ emissions in the regions of the Americas, Asia and Europe. Also, contractionary monetary and fiscal policy combined with higher institutional quality jointly reduce CO₂ emissions in African countries. Higher renewable energy consumption reduces CO₂ emissions in Africa, Asia, Europe and Americas regions while strong institutional quality consistently reduce CO₂ emissions in Europe and the Americas.

Monetary and fiscal authorities should strengthen existing institutions, increase renewable energy consumption, and increase interest rate and taxes on the fossil fuel economy in a coordinated manner to reduce CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel energy consumption.

There are calls for monetary and fiscal authorities to use policy tools to support ongoing efforts to achieve the net zero emissions goal. However, limited attention has been paid to the regional differences in the relationship between monetary-fiscal policy and CO₂ emissions.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically analyze the literature around regulatory compliance and market manipulation in capital markets through the use of bibliometrics and propose future research directions. Under the domain of capital markets, this theme is a niche area of research where greater academic investigations are required. Most of the research is fragmented and limited to a few conventional aspects only. To address this gap, this study engages in a large-scale systematic literature review approach to collect and analyze the research corpus in the post-2000 era.

The big data corpus comprising research articles has been extracted from the scientific Scopus database and analyzed using the VoSviewer application. The literature around the subject has been presented using bibliometrics to give useful insights on the most popular research work and articles, top contributing journals, authors, institutions and countries leading to identification of gaps and potential research areas.

Based on the review, this study concludes that, even in an era of global market integration and disruptive technological advancements, many important aspects of this subject remain significantly underexplored. Over the past two decades, research has lagged behind the evolution of capital market crime and market regulations. Finally, based on the findings, the study suggests important future research directions as well as a few research questions. This includes market manipulation, market regulations and new-age technologies, all of which could be very useful to researchers in this field and generate key inputs for stock market regulators.

The limitation of this research is that it is based on Scopus database so the possibility of omission of some literature cannot be completely ruled out. More advanced machine learning techniques could be applied to decode the finer aspects of the studies undertaken so far.

Increased integration among global markets, fast-paced technological disruptions and complexity of financial crimes in stock markets have put immense pressure on market regulators. As economies and equity markets evolve, good research investigations can aid in a better understanding of market manipulation and regulatory compliance. The proposed research directions will be very useful to researchers in this field as well as generate key inputs for stock market regulators to deal with market misbehavior.

This study has adopted a period-wise broad-based scientific approach to identify some of the most pertinent gaps in the subject and has proposed practical areas of study to strengthen the literature in the said field.

The study investigates the influence of managerial discretion over accruals on banks' financial reporting quality. Furthermore, it examines the role of ownership in shaping managerial incentives to manipulate banks’ reporting quality in a developing economy.

The sample includes 37 Indian public- and private-sector banks from the fiscal year 2001–2022. The discretionary LLP (DLLP) is used to examine various managerial incentives and accounting quality. The models are estimated using panel fixed-effect regression and the system generalized method of moments. The results survive several sensitivity checks.

The results exhibit a low quality of financial reporting in public-sector banks, which is evident through the higher use of DLLP for income smoothing and signaling. In contrast, the low-capitalized private-sector banks employ DLLP to manage capital.

The study’s sample size is relatively small and focuses on a single country. Future researchers can investigate other emerging economies to better generalize the findings of this study.

The study highlights the influential role of ownership in shaping managerial incentives in the banking industry. Moreover, the study is of utmost importance for governments, regulators and policymakers in devising policies that reduce agency conflicts and improve financial stability in emerging economies.

The study subscribes to the growing literature on the role of ownership in influencing the banks’ financial reporting quality. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the limited studies in the context of government-owned vs private-owned banks in an emerging economy.

To strategically evaluate the sustainable development of the FinTech industry on a global scale, which has not been done to date. This study aims to address this scientific problem and empirically analyze the contribution of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and their indicators to the sustainable growth in the FinTech sector, whose impact is fundamentally changing the financial services sector, considering perspectives from business, academia and the public sector. The main contribution of this paper is, therefore, the identification of strategically relevant sustainability indicators and factors for defining and assessing the sustainability of the FinTech industry at the national level, and their application in further research and practice globally.

Multicriteria simple additive weighting is used in quantitative empirical research.

Three primary conclusions are indicated by the study’s results: the SDGs 9 “Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure,” SDG 4 “Quality Education,” SDG 8 “Decent Work and Economic Growth” and SDG 16 “Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions” are the most important for the sustainable growth of the FinTech industry. Unrestricted public access to FinTech and an educated working-age population are the main factors influencing the sustainable development of the FinTech industry. Northern Europe, with Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden leading the way, has the best sustainable development results related to the FinTech industry.

The results of the study are practically useful and applicable both to policymakers seeking to strategically bolster sustainable growth within the framework of the FinTech industry, and to FinTech companies conducting strategic development internationally.

The study initiates a discussion in the scientific community about what constitutes sustainable development of the global FinTech industry, which is currently not defined.

A recent literature has documented the real effect of Trade Policy Uncertainty (TPU) on trade, stock markets and unemployment; however, there is no specific study that has examined how trade uncertainty influences banking sector stability. In this quest, this study aims to bridge this gap by examining the impact of TPU in the USA and China on the stability of the Indian banking sector. Additionally, the study aims to assess the moderating influence of banking regulation and supervision on the aforementioned relationship.

To quantify the above objectives, the study uses a robust set of econometric estimates, i.e. system generalised method of moments (Sys-GMM), fixed effect model and pair-wise Granger causality test on the alternative proxies of banking stability from 2000 to 2023.

The empirical estimates validate that TPU has a negative impact on the Indian banking stability. Moreover, the impact of the USA. TPU is much more significant on the Indian banking sector’s stability in comparison to the Chinese TPU. The empirical model further suggests that banking regulation and supervision moderate the negative influence of trade uncertainties on the Indian banking sector’s stability and assist in improving it. Finally, the pairwise causality test confirms a unidirectional causal relationship between the TPU in the USA and China and the stability of the Indian banking sector, thereby validating the transmission effect of trade uncertainty on this sector.

To the best of the author’s study, this study is original and offers useful policy recommendations for understanding the implications of trade uncertainty for banking stability. The study also offers insight to comprehend the role of banking regulation and compliance in mitigating the adverse repercussion of trade uncertainties on the banking sector’s stability.