The motivation behind the current research is to check the effect of the recent introduction of value added tax (VAT) and Vision 2030 on the economy of Saudi Arabia. To check this, those variables are added to the analysis which contribute to economic development including labor, capital, oil price, financial development, and trade openness to examine that how economic transformation affects the role of these variables in economic growth. According to the vector error correction (VEC) model, the impact of labor becomes negative after VAT, however, the impact of capital and financial development becomes significant by this transformation. The coefficients of oil prices, for positive and negative shocks, are significant and negative. Financial development and trade openness are reporting surprising results; positive shocks have shown negative coefficients. However, after Vision 2030, trade openness has a significant and positive coefficient. Policy implications include diversification of exports, reviving the private financing mechanism and restructuring the export/import policies.

Abstract. Evidence thus far suggests fair value accounting poses risk and affects firms' returns in some ways. This research, on a sample of Asian banks, improves the understanding of the information risk effect of fair value accounting by examining the moderating role of risk disclosure in the relationship between fair value accounting and the cost of equity capital. The results from a generalised method of moments on dynamic panel data analysis, show that risk disclosure mitigates the asymmetric information problem. Thus the findings contribute towards the standard setters' effort in improving the practice of fair value accounting, and suggest that there are benefits in mandating disclosure especially for banks.

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The cost of equity is a measure of the required return by investors. It is desirable for firms, especially banks, to lower the cost of equity. There are a number of factors related to the quality of information disclosed that could influence the cost of equity. The accounting regulators aim to improve the quality of information by requiring assets to be valued at fair value. However the application of fair value accounting potentially increases information asymmetry, especially if fair value is estimated and subjected to the judgment of the preparers of financial statements. This asymmetric information problem potentially lowers the information quality and increases investors' estimation risk and thus influences the cost of equity capital. Therefore, this research investigates the effect of fair value accounting on the cost of equity capital for a sample of Asian banks since banks hold a relatively larger proportion of assets at fair value. Using the generalized method of moment model for dynamic panel data, this research finds significant and positive relationship between assets at fair value and the cost of equity. The results found are similar for both quoted and unquoted assets. Thus although to regulators, fair value accounting provide relevant and timely information to investors, assets at fair value are perceived to be risky and as a consequence investors require higher returns.