In this paper, using our actual experience as finance faculty, we go over the steps to build and run an Investment Lab at University. First, we explain how the curriculum may be changed in order to accommodate this experiential learning opportunity in a finance undergraduate program. We explain how a new course oriented towards portfolio management may be created. Next, we describe how the student body may benefit from this initiative. Why is an Investment Lab needed at a university? What are the disadvantages of not having an Investment Lab (i.e. losing market share to competition, not bridging between theory and practice, and so on)? What is the solution to these problems? We explain that the solution possibly requires a new “Applied Portfolio Management Concentration/Minor”. As an example, we show what courses may be included under this new minor. Then, we go over the operational plan, including the business plan. We propose the establishment of a four-course minor, the lab, and a student managed fund. We explain how the whole operation will be financed. Then, we present the timeline and explain what needs to be done throughout the whole process. Finally, we go over the costs in detail. We believe that this paper will help other universities that would like to start an Investment Lab.

This paper summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the issue of corruption. The main purpose of the research is to examine the impact of global economic/financial crisis on corruption. We focus on manufacturing firms in the EECA region and examine their activities including bidding for government contracts, applying for an operating license, and applying for an import license. Systematization of the literary sources and approaches for solving the problem indicates that bribes got significantly smaller after the crisis ended. The relevance of this scientific problem decision is that governments’ efforts to improve the overall business environment when facing an economic/financial crisis help reduce corruption. Investigation of corruption in the paper is carried out in the following logical sequence: First, the size of bribes for securing government contracts is examined. Then, the prevalence of bribery during import license application process is examined. Finally, the prevalence of bribery during operating license application process is examined. Methodological tools of the research methods were non-parametric tests that compare the years of 2007 and 2010-2014. The research object is manufacturing firms in the EECA region because they were included in the BEEPS IV and BEEPS V manufacturing surveys. The research empirically confirms and theoretically proves that governments’ actions during an economic or financial crisis affect the size and prevalence of bribery. The research results can be useful for government officials that plan on reducing corruption in their region or country.

In this study, we focus on how regulations and taxes affect manufacturing firms in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. We examine whether overall regulations became a bigger obstacle to these firms after the 2008-2009 Global crisis. We also examine whether tax inspections became a bigger obstacle after the Global crisis. Besides regulations and tax inspections, we also look into the prevalence of corruption related to tax officials before and after the Global crisis. Using two large datasets (i.e. the BEEPS IV and BEEPS V surveys), we are able to compare the pre-crisis period to the post-crisis period. Our results show that, in this region, post-crisis, senior managers spent more time on dealing with overall regulations which includes tax-related regulations and other types of regulations. Therefore, we can conclude that, post-crisis, regulations became a bigger obstacle to manufacturing firms’ operations. We also find that, post-crisis, there was a significant drop in the percentage of firms that had inspections or meetings with tax officials. Also, post-crisis, each firm on average, had fewer inspections or meetings with tax officials. Therefore, while overall regulations became a bigger obstacle to these firms, tax inspections became a smaller problem. When we examine corruption, we find that there was no significant change in the prevalence of bribes related to tax officials. Before and after the Global crisis, a similar percentage (8-9%) of manufacturing firms had to deal with bribe requests by tax officials. Future studies may focus on other types of regulations which include employment regulations, health and safety regulations, licensing regulations, environmental regulations, and zoning regulations, and the corruption related to these regulations.