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The purpose of this interdisciplinary cross-country study is to investigate the influence of cultural tightness-looseness on money laundering.

The authors rely on tightness-looseness theory as the basis for their predictions. The authors use the Basel Anti Money Laundering Index to operationalize financial crimes. They use dynamic panel data regressions spanning from 2012 to 2018 across 66 countries.

The authors find a positive and significant effect of national culture on money laundering financial crime. This suggests that financial crimes increase in countries with higher levels of cultural looseness orientation. Moreover, the authors show that the absence of violence, control of corruption, political stability and voice and accountability has a significant and negative influence on money laundering financial crime.

Formal institutional factors are not the only factors that can help curb financial crimes, but policy regulators should also consider the degree of cultural tightness-looseness.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first research ever to examine the effects of cultural tightness-looseness on the level of financial crimes.

This study aims to compare the value relevance of accounting numbers prepared under the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) standards with those produced under the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for Takaful companies (TC).

The authors assess the value relevance of accounting numbers using the Easton and Harris (1991) and Ohlson (1995) return and price models. They also use 54 insurance companies from 10 developing countries in Asia and the Middle East from 2006 to 2015.

The analysis shows that book value is significantly related to stock price under AAOIFI and IFRS. It also shows that TC adopting AAOIFI accounting standards have a more significant effect on stock price. This suggests that AAOIFI standards are more value relevant than IFRS.

TC and their stakeholders can use the findings to determine which accounting standards (IFRS or AAOIFI) produce the more relevant accounting information. This study is useful for investors that consider Islamic ethical practices to make their investment decisions for the standards-setting bodies that focus on establishing accounting standards for the Takaful industry.

The authors investigate a new aspect of the topic of value relevance. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, they believe this is the first paper examining the value relevance of TC’ accounting information prepared under AAOIFI and IFRS.