The author makes comments on the state of the problem in part of the English-speaking scientific thought. The authors present a comparative analysis of risk management conducted in countries where the dual banking system is practised — Islamic (ethical) banking and conventional (western) banking. The study showed that a risk profile of an Islamic bank is not significantly different from the one of the conventional banks in practices. In the beginning, they point out the central thesis and prospects for the development of conventional and Islamic banking. The central part of the comments begins with the historical aspect of the comparison. According to him, despite the differences, they are based on the priority of financial and human values. Further, the authors carefully discuss the risk profile of Islamic banks and the unique risks facing Islamic banks. It was confronted with conventional risk management of banks based on the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS). Today, the regulation applies to credit risk, market risk, operational risk and liquidity risk (Basel II and Basel III). After all, the author reaches two essential conclusions for his research.

The level of investment activity among Russians is rather low; that is why the understanding it predictors is of great importance. First, I presented an overview of Russian and international studies of psychological aspects of investment behaviour. Further, I discussed the results of the empirical research using the following sample: 360 respondents from 18 to 68 years old (average age 26 years). In my research, I used methods: socio-demographic characteristics, investment activity, including cognitive and behavioural readiness to invest in different financial instruments, and calculated index of investment activity. As concerns implementation of specific psychodiagnostic methods, I used the Questionnaire of tolerance and intolerance to ambiguity, Personal factors of decision-making, Semantic differential, and Big Five short portrait questionnaire (BF 5–10). The predictors of Russians’ investment activity, including their willingness to invest in cryptocurrencies, show a positive perception of bitcoin, high emotional stability, low intolerance to uncertainty, low rationality, and low kindness to other people.

The article addresses international currency conflicts. The research has found that currency conflict has extensive economic effects, especially on the United States and the weak peripheral countries of the Eurozone, as well as Canada, and some other countries that do not intervene in the currency markets. The author has revealed that these developments and ill-effects of global currency manipulation stem from a gaping hole in the international economic architecture. The theoretical significance of the article’s outcomes is that the most fundamental flaw in the entire global regime encompasses both the monetary and trading systems, and indicates a massive failure of international cooperation. The practical significance of the paper is that it has outlaid a feasible set of effective systemic reforms that can be adopted to counter the objectionable practices today and deter them in the future. The author concludes that it is very much in the interest of all the world’s countries to initiate a multilateral effort to work out a constructive solution to a significant international and systemic problem.

The activity of any commercial organisation is of high risk. It is often connected with the fact that companies tend to take various risks to achieve their own goals for the sake of which they operate and perform their activities. Understanding and determination of whether a company is financially stable require us to conduct the so-called creditworthiness analysis of an entity. Moreover, it is expedient for any profit-making company to analyse and perform monitoring its creditworthiness. All of this makes such a kind of an analysis pretty relevant and useful. This research may be regarded as an attempt to examine theoretical fundamentals and some existing methodologies of creditworthiness analysis.

The article presents the results of an empirical study of the characteristics of the evaluation of social and political advertising by young men and women. In total 96 respondents aged 18 to 22 years (M = 18.7; SD = 0.92) took part in research. The semantic differential was used as a research method; respondents were asked to evaluate two photographs depicting social and political advertising on public transport. By comparing the average estimates of social and political advertising, it was found that political advertising as a whole is evaluated more negatively than social advertising. Young men evaluate social advertising more positively than young women. There were no significant differences in the assessment of political advertising between the two genders.

In this article, the author presents the legal nature and economic effects of Free Trade Agreements (FTA or RTS according to WTO terminology) on economies of members and third countries. The second aim was an evaluation of the economic effect of TAFTA (TTIP) on the United States and the European Union in the case of Brexit as well as some potential impact on third countries and alternative FTAs as counterweights to TTIP. To identify the mathematical and statistical relationships, I constructed correlation and regression models between dependent and independent variables. The dependent variables are GDP, independent variables of GDP per capita, unemployment, exports and imports, price index and investment, as well as the country’s participation in the free trade zone. To evaluate the independent variable (specifically the participation in the free trade zone), a “dummy variable” I used with values “0” during ten years prior the entrance intro free trade zone and “1” during ten years after the entrance of a particular country into the free trade zone. The general conclusions following from my study is that RTS allows many countries to negotiate and achieve much more preferential trade conditions than is possible at the multilateral level.

Contents of the Journal for 2019.