Editor’s introduction

The 23rd issue of Financial Innovation (FIN), Volume 6, No.5 (2020) presents fourteen papers contributed by 27 authors and co-authors from nine countries and areas: China, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Iraq, Taiwan, Turkey, United Kingdom, and USA.

The first paper, “Financial sector development and Investment in selected countries of the Economic Community of West African States: empirical evidence using heterogeneous panel data method”, by Chimere O. Iheonu, Simplice A. Asongu, Kingsley O. Odo, and Patrick K. Ojiem, investigates the impact of financial sector development on domestic investment in selected countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for the years 1985–2017. The second paper, “Apples, oranges and lemons: public sector debt statistics in the twenty-first century”, by Mike Seiferling, suggests that most of the world’s governments still do not seem to feel sufficient pressure to voluntarily provide comprehensive financial statistics based on well-defined modern methodological frameworks. The third paper, “Cost–benefit analysis of trading strategies in the stock index futures market”, by Xiong Xiong, Yian Cui, Xiaocong Yan, Jun Liu, and Shaoyi He, builds an agent-based cross-market platform which includes five stocks and one stock index future, and constructs an evaluation system for stock index futures trading strategies. The fourth paper, “Debt choice, growth opportunities and corporate investment: evidence from China”, by Ning Ding, Kalimullah Bhat and Khalil Jebran, investigates how relying on short-term debt may help Chinese listed firms to make efficient investment decisions and reduce overinvestment problem for low-growth firms. The fifth paper, “The effect of individual factors on user behavior and the moderating role of trust: an empirical investigation of consumers’ acceptance of electronic banking in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq”, by Yadgar Taha M. Hamakhan, investigates the effect of Individual Factors on User Behavior, and the moderating role of Trust in the relationship between Individual Factors. The sixth paper, “Comprehensive review of text-mining applications in finance”, by Aaryan Gupta, Vinya Dengre, Hamza Abubakar Kheruwala, and Manan Shah, focuses on the text-mining literature related to financial forecasting, banking, and corporate finance. The seventh paper, by “Governing the Gold Rush into Emerging Markets: A Mixed-method Case Study of Indonesia’s Regulatory Responses to the Expansion of Chinese-backed Online P2P Lending”, by Angela Tritto, Yujia He and Victoria Amanda Junaedi, concludes a proactive approach towards monitoring and regulating emerging high-tech industries which should be sought by strengthening links with industry and civil society, and through international cooperation for policy and knowledge sharing. The eighth paper, “How to discover the optimal weights in weighted-scoring stock-picking models – A mixture design approach”, by Cheng Yeh and Yi-Cheng Liu, aims to employ a mixture experimental design to collect the weights of stock-picking concepts and portfolio performance data, as well as to build up performance prediction models based on the weights of stock-picking concepts. The ninth paper, “Applying multivariate-Fractionally Integrated Volatility Analysis on Emerging Market Bond Portfolios”, by Mustafa Demirel and Gazanfer Unal, examines emerging market (EM) local bonds from a portfolio risk perspective and suggests methodologies for risk evaluation. The tenth paper, “Capital mobility in Latin American and Caribbean countries New evidence from dynamic common correlated effects panel data modeling”, by Vasudeva Murthy and Natalya Ketenci, investigates the capital mobility level in a panel of 16 Latin American and 4 Caribbean countries for the period, 1960–2017, by testing the Feldstein-Horioka puzzle.