How did a health crisis translate to an economic crisis? Why did the spread of the coronavirus bring the global economy to its knees? The answer lies in two methods by which coronavirus stifled economic activities. First, the spread of the virus encouraged social distancing which led to the shutdown of financial markets, corporate offices, businesses and events. Second, the exponential rate at which the virus was spreading, and the heightened uncertainty about how bad the situation could get, led to flight to safety in consumption and investment among consumers, investors and international trade partners. We focus on the period from the start of 2020 through March when the coronavirus began spreading into other countries and markets. We draw on real-world observations in assessing the restrictive measures, monetary policy measures, fiscal policy measures and the public health measures that were adopted during the period.

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This study is based on the national-level household data in India provided by the EDA research team in India (www.edarural.com) who coordinated and undertook a national level microfinance impact study for the SIDBI Foundation for Micro Credit. We are grateful to Frances Sinha who allowed us to share the data and her unpublished working papers. We have also benefited from comments from Raghav Gaiha, David Hulme, Takahiro Sato, participants in seminars at University of Manchester and four anonymous referees. Support from RIEB, University of Kobe for the first author is greatly appreciated. The views expressed are those of the authors and they bear full responsibility for any deficiencies that remain.

There is scant research on the financial reporting behaviour of global systemically-important banks (G-SIBs) and non-global systemically-important banks (non-G-SIBs). We examine the link between financial reporting and financial system stability given the understanding that income smoothing is a stability mechanism for banks. We empirically examine whether the way G-SIBs use loan loss provisions (LLPs) to smooth income differ compared to non-G-SIBs and the incentive to do so. We examine 231 European banks and find that income smoothing is pronounced among G-SIBs in the post-crisis period and pronounced among non-G-SIBs in the precrisis period. Also, G-SIBs exhibit greater income smoothing when they: (i) have substantial non-performing loans, (ii) are more profitable and meet/exceed minimum regulatory capital ratios (iii) engage in forwardlooking loan-loss provisioning and during recessionary periods. The implication of our findings is that capital regulation and abnormal economic fluctuations create incentives for systemic banks to use accounting numbers (loan loss provisions) to smooth income, which also align with the financial system stability objective of bank regulators. Our findings are useful to accounting standard setters in their evaluation of the role of reported accounting numbers for financial system stability, given the current regulatory environment in Europe which focuses on systemic banks.

Islamic finance is gaining greater attention in the finance industry, and this paper analyses how Islamic Financial Institutions (IFIs) are responding to the welfare needs of society.Using interview data with managers and content analysis of the disclosures, this study attempts to understand management perceptions of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in IFIs. A thorough understanding of CSR by managers, as evident in the interviews, has not been translated fully into practice. The partial use of IFIs' potential role in social welfare would add further challenges in the era of financialisation.

Prior research on the impact of CSR on EM has used exclusively CSR scores provided by CSR score indices (e.g. SiRi ranking index; KLD ranking index; FTSE4Good Global). Already existing indices criticized for not provide enough information about their methodologies (e.g., Kostyuk et al. 2013; Mitchell et al. 2004) and not being fully grounded in the theoretical development of CSR (e.g., Gond and Crane 2010; Mattingly and Berman 2006; Rowley and Berman 2000). The manual measurement employed in this study for CSR (disclosure index/content analysis) is considered to provide a more detailed and precise measure (Haniffa and Cooke 2005; Hassan and Harahap 2010). To the best of our knowledge, such manual measures have not been employed in joint studies of CSR and EM. Second, the majority of studies in this area are conducted in the context of US (e.g. Grougiou et al. 2014; Kim et al. 2012; Yip et al. 2011). Although the UK and the US share some common features, there are differences in many ways that could affect the inferences of such research (Toms and Wright 2005). For example, US companies are required to disclose more detailed information about corporate social activities and corporate governance than are UK firms (Lennox 2003). Another area of divergence is the notion of EM practice. In this regard, (Brown and Higgins 2001) indicate that the extent to which US managers manage earnings is significantly higher than by their counterparts in the UK. For these considerations, the present study has a strong incentive to shed more light on the potential impact of CSR on EM in the context of the UK.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence of the relationship between female representation on the board and forward-looking information disclosures (FLIDs). Design/methodology/approach The study uses the content analysis to analyze the narrative evidence from the annual financial reports of non-financial Jordanian companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange. The final sample consists of 1,206 firm-year observations during the period 2008-2013. Findings The study provides evidence that gender diversity on boards positively affects the level of FLIDs. Further to this, the study reveals that family firms disclose more information than non-family firms. Practical implications Results of this study could be beneficial for a number of users of financial information such as, regulators, investors, auditors and lenders. The users might consider the findings of this study when they are using the company’s financial information. Consequently, users of this information could be better assisted to make right decisions. Originality/value This study contributes to the literature by identifying the role of gender on the level of FLID, particularly on family and non-family, a relatively little researched area.