From the Editor

Dear Readers, Welcome to the fourth issue of The International Trade Journal (ITJ)’s thirty-seventh volume. The articles in this issue focus on international finance and accounting. They look at how the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) affects trade in accounting services, the relationship between foreign investors and tunneling, commodity trade mispricing in Laos, and the relationship between economic integration and share prices in Nigeria. The first article, by Melissa Shirah, Kristie Briggs, and Sijing Wei, looks at whether adopting IFRS accounting standards affects countries’ exports of accounting services. Using a gravity model of trade, they find that accounting exports between countries are no higher when both countries have adopted IFRS than when one, or both, partners have not adopted these standards. They argue that this suggests that adopting IFRS fails to effectively lower regulatory barriers to trade in accounting services. The second article, by Tanvir Ahmed, Qaisar Ali Malik, Babar Zaheer Butt, and Muhammad Aksar, looks at the relationship between corporate governance, foreign institutional investors, and tunneling activities in Pakistan. The study finds an inverted U-shaped relationship between foreign institutional investors and tunneling, with tunneling first increasing and then decreasing as foreign institutional investors’ trading increases. Improved corporate governance moderates this relationship. The third article, by Rahul Mehrotra, Vanthana Nolintha, and Vanxay Sayavong, looks at trade mispricing in the coffee and copper sectors in Laos. Using micro-level transaction data, the authors find significant underpricing of coffee exports, and overand underpricing of copper concentrate exports, but little evidence of trade mispricing for refined copper. They argue that this is due to trade between related firms, regulatory problems, and weak capacity in the country’s customs agency. The final article, by Ebenezer Adesoji Olubiyi, looks at how economic integration between Nigeria and its five major trade partners (the United States, China, India, the Netherlands, and Spain) affects stock market performance in Nigeria and its trading partners. The author finds that integration