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This study aims to examine the effects of the introduction of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on the explanatory power of earnings for stock returns in Greece.

The study uses variants of the Easton and Harris model. Moreover, the study controls for asymmetries in the information content of earnings and losses.

The findings show that the IFRS had several effects on the value relevance of earnings. In particular, the available information content of both earnings and earning changes decreased after the introduction of the IFRS. The reduction in the information content of earnings for returns (or the information content of book values of equity for stock prices) could be attributed to the IFRS and, in particular, to the introduction of the fair value principle. Moreover, even after controlling for the existence of asymmetries, the findings of reduced information content of earnings and earning changes for stock returns persist.

The study makes a significant contribution to the research of the implementation of the IFRS. In particular, the study examines the adoption of a set of high quality standards in a country where accounting was dominated by tax laws and governmental intervention.

This paper aims to investigate the intervalling effect bias in ETFs' systematic risk expressed by beta. The authors' findings reveal the existence of a significant intervalling effect on ETFs' beta obtained by the ordinary least squares method (OLS). Also investigated is the impact of ETFs' capitalization on beta. Results provide evidence that small cap ETFs have greater betas than large cap ETFs. Results also reveal that the OLS beta of all ETFs increases when the return interval is lengthened regardless of capitalization. The impact of ETFs' trading activity on systematic risk is assessed too. Findings give evidence that the OLS betas of the ETFs that trade infrequently are biased downwards while the beta of the frequently traded ETFs is biased upwards. Finally, the paper reveals a strong intervalling effect on ETFs' tracking error.

The authors employ a sample of 40 broad‐based ETFs listed on Nasdaq Stock Exchange to test whether beta estimates change when the return interval measurement changes. Their data cover a maximum period of ten years starting from September 16, 1998 using daily, weekly and monthly return data. The authors estimate beta applying three alternative methods: the market model applied with the OLS method, the Scholes and Williams model (SW beta) and the Dimson model (Dim beta).

Results indicate that the average beta of ETFs derived by the OLS method increases when the return interval increases. The differences among the daily, weekly and monthly OLS betas are statistically significant at the 1 per cent level. This finding implies a strong intervalling effect bias in ETFs' OLS beta. On the other hand, the authors did not find any statistically significant differences in daily, weekly and monthly Scholes and Williams and Dimson betas. Moreover, results show that the daily and weekly OLS and Scholes and Williams betas and weekly OLS and Dimson betas are significantly different from each other.

In this paper using a sample of 40 broad‐based ETFs listed on Nasdaq Stock Exchange, the authors have examined various issues concerning: the intervalling effect bias in ETFs' systematic risk, the relation between beta and capitalization of ETFs, the relation between beta and trading frequency of ETFs and, finally, the intervalling effect bias in ETFs' tracking error. While the literature on intervalling effect on securities' beta and the relation between systematic risk and market value and trading activity is voluminous, this is the first attempt to examine these issues with respect to ETFs.

This paper aims to examine value gains to acquirers in large commercial bank mega‐mergers (with transaction values over £1 billion) that occurred in the European Union during the period 1997‐2007, distinguishing between domestic and cross‐border transactions.

Based on a sample of 62 bank mega‐mergers, an event study methodology is employed using a market model to determine cumulative standardised abnormal returns (CSAR) to acquiring banks around the announcement date of merger deals. This is followed by cross‐sectional regression to determine specific characteristics driving acquirers' CSAR.

Cross‐border bank mergers have been more frequent in recent years, reflecting a growing trend of banking sector consolidation in the EU. However, such mergers are found to yield significant negative announcement period acquirer returns, while domestic deals have marginally negative but insignificant returns. The operational cost efficiency and capital strength of acquiring banks are found to be significant in influencing excess returns.

Constraints on data availability limited the scope for sensitivity analysis and incorporation of target characteristics in the cross‐sectional regression of drivers affecting acquirers' CSAR. Further research is aimed to address these issues.

Event study and regression results indicate that potential downside risks are judged by market participants to outweigh the benefits from cross‐border M&As in the retail banking market despite evidence of increased financial sector consolidation in the EU.

The study reflects the recent period of increased cross‐border banking consolidation in the EU and reveals findings that differ in some respects from previous studies on EU bank M&As.

Prior studies on the determinants of audit reports focus on non‐financial sectors. In contrast, the present study seeks to examine the determinants of auditors' opinion in the banking industry, using a sample of banks drawn from nine Asian countries over the period 1995‐2004.

Logistic regression and a sample of 199 qualified financial statements and 4,403 unqualified ones are used.

The results indicate that Asian banks that receive qualified opinions are in general smaller ones, less well capitalized, less profitable and cost efficient, and appear to have excess liquidity. More external auditing requirements and less accounting and disclosure requirements in the banking sector, also increase the probability of receiving a qualified audit opinion.

Knowledge of the above mentioned characteristics could be of particular interest to banks' managers, investors, credit analysts and bank supervisors.

Despite the economic importance of the banking industry, accounting researchers have done little to investigate the various relationships that exist between banks and their auditors. Furthermore, most studies focus on the US market and examine the pricing of audit services for financial institutions, the audit opinions on publicly‐traded savings and loans institutions that subsequently failed, the effectiveness of bank audit, the loss underreporting and the auditor role of examination of banks, the impact of accounting and auditing systems on risk‐shifting of safety nets in banking. The present paper extends the literature by investigating the determinants of external auditors' opinion on Asian banks.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the efficiency and productivity of a Greek bank's branches.

The sample consists of 458 branches of a Greek commercial bank, operating in 13 regions of Greece over the period 2002‐2005, a total of 1,795 observations. Data envelopment analysis was used to explore the efficiency and productivity of the branches. Then, fixed and random effects models were used to determine the impact of internal and external factors on the efficiency and productivity scores.

The results indicate that the branches in the sample could have achieved improved overall performance during 2002‐2005. Also, that the inclusion of loan loss provisions as an input variable increases the efficiency score, but for the total factor productivity (TFP) change, the results are mixed. The second stage regressions indicate that both the logarithm of personnel and the logarithm of income per capita in the local market have a significant impact on efficiency, while the loans to total assets ratio has a significant impact on pure technical efficiency only. When the various productivity change measures were regressed over the explanatory variables, it was found that the logarithm of per capita gross fixed capital formation has a positive and statistically significant impact on all measures. Also, that the return on assets, the loans to deposit ratio, the logarithm of personnel, and the logarithm of income of per capita, all have a positive and statistically significant impact on overall efficiency change.

This paper is the first study on Greek branches which examines the impact of market conditions. It examines the impact of risk‐taking on the efficiency of the branches and examines the productivity growth of the branch network using the Malmquist TFP index.

This paper aims to examine the impact of corruption and bureaucracy on economic growth in Greece as measured by the growth rate of per capita GDP. Also, using the mean per capita GDP of the EU as a benchmark, it seeks to investigate the convergence timing of Greece with the EU.

The empirical approach taken is based on beta convergence theory.

The results confirm the negative impact of bureaucracy and corruption on economic growth. However, the corruption exerts a more significant influence on growth than bureaucracy. Also, the timing of convergence of Greece with the EU is found to be 37 years.

The robustness of these results is based on the use of a relatively new econometric method which is the Markov conditional bootstrap.

The paper aims to investigate European equity market integration by analyzing volatility spillover effects between selected indices of high liquidity from the major regulated European equity markets.

In undertaking the empirical analysis, data for major European stock market indices were utilised. The conditional variance of the VAR‐GARCH model for each pair of indices is examined.

The results provide evidence on strong EU equity market integration. The findings in general suggest a high degree of European equity market interconnection. This situation is depicted through strong effects from one European equity market to the other, as well as through significant feedback effects between them.

The high level of interconnection found among the EU stock markets exerts significant influence on the efficient operation of each market and on asset and index pricing, which has therefore to be taken into account by investors and traders as market prices are set in common.

This research empirically establishes that the interpersonal population diversity of executive board members partly explains the differences in financial misconduct across US banks. It advances the hypothesis that heterogeneity in the composition of an interpersonal population and diverse traits of board members, originating from the prehistoric course of the exodus of Homo sapiens from East Africa tens of thousands of years ago, is an important factor explaining the effectiveness of executive board monitoring with respect to a bank engaging in financial misconduct. The underlying intuition is that population-fragmented societies, characterized by mistrust, preference heterogeneity and corruption, find it difficult to sustain collective integrity action.

Employing a panel of US banks from 1998 to 2019 we find that adding directors from countries with different levels of interpersonal population diversity is positively associated with financial misconduct as measured by enforcement and class action litigation against banks by the main regulatory agencies. Furthermore, we document that the more population-diverse bank boards are more likely to commit misconduct, consistent with a mechanism of inter-generational transmission of cultural norms of mistrust and non-cooperation.

We find that adding directors from countries with different levels of interpersonal population diversity is positively associated with financial misconduct as measured by enforcement and class action litigation against banks by the main regulatory agencies. These results are robust to controlling for bank-specific variables, including other board characteristics, and to the use of instrumental variables.

The findings suggest that reducing financial misconduct by banks likely requires reducing the interpersonal population diversity of banks’ executive boards.

We show how bank boards with different interpersonal population diversity impact the likelihood of engaging in misconduct provides evidence of the microeconomic effects of interpersonal population diversity. We show the negative results of diversity that they can have on the management of a firm given that populated diverse boards are more likely to lead to higher levels of misconduct. Our evidence reveals that banks having interpersonal population fragmented boards are more likely to commit misconduct given the cultural norms of mistrust and the lack of societal cohesiveness.