Ousayna Zreik

Teaching

• Financial Market
• Bank management
• International Finance
• Risk management
• Investment management
• Computer use in bank
• Financial tool box
• Advanced financial analysis
• Short-term and long-term financing
• Quantitative finance
• From start-up to listing
• Costs analysis
• Accounting information system
• Fundamentals of Management Accounting

Qualifications

• Maître de conférence (MCF, Lecturer)

Research Interest

• Qualitative analysis
• Risk management
• Event study
• Financial crises
• Behavior finance
• Green credit impact
• Artificial intelligence impact
• Financial market

Work Experience

• Assistant Professor, Finance and Accounting Area, Rennes School of Business (Septembre 2023 – Present)
• Deputy Dean, Faculty of Economics, Damascus University (September 2022 – July 2023)
• Assistant Professor, Faculty of Economics, Damascus University (2019 – 2023)
• Assistant Professor, Rennes School of Business (2016 – 2019)
• Lecturer, Rennes 2 University (2015 – 2016)
• Lecturer, ESC Rennes (January 2014 – April 2014)
• Teaching Assistant, Damascus University (2008 – 2009)

Intellectual contributions

• Dowling, M., Hammami, H., Tawil, D., & Zreik, O. (2021). Writing energy economics research for impact. The Energy Journal, 42(3).
• Dowling, M., Hammami, H., & Zreik, O. (2018). Easy to read, easy to cite?. Economics letters, 173, 100-103.
• Zreik, O., & Louhichi, W. (2017). Risk disclosure and company unsystematic, systematic, and total risks. Economics Bulletin, 37(1), 448-467.
• Zreik, O., & Louhichi, W. (2017). Risk sentiment and firms’ liquidity in the French market. Research in International Business and Finance, 39, 809-823.
• Louhichi, W., Zreik, O. (2015). Corporate Risk Reporting: A study of The Impact of Risk Disclosure on Firms Reputation, Economics Bulletin, Vol. 35(4), 2395-2408.

Presentations of Refereed Papers

• Writing energy economics research for impact

Using Scopus, we identify all articles published in The Energy Journal from 1996 to 2013. We have explored, for the first time, determinants of energy economics research impact. We concentrate on how non-topic writing and structural features of articles influence subsequent citations. We find that about 20% of the variation in future citations to The Energy Journal articles can be explained by these factors. By blending our statistical analysis with existing advice on good writing in economics and energy science, we can offer a condensed set of guidelines for creating impact. This study thus propounds the strong benefits of paying attention not just to the topic of an article, but also to how it is written, presented, and structured. It is, however, worth bearing in mind when interpreting these findings that we have, by necessity, only measured impact by future citations.

• Easy to read, easy to cite?

We select abstracts through Scopus from all 3229 regular publications in Economics Letters for the years 2003–2012. Citation information on articles is obtained from Scopus for the following five years after the year of publication. Our analysis is based primarily on a range of formal readability measures. For each abstract published in EL from 2003–2012 (3229 regular articles), we calculate the Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES), Gunning Fog Index (FOG), and SMOG Index (SMOG) (Bailin and Grafstein, 2016). These measures are widely-applied approaches to measuring how complex a piece of writing is to read. We show that readability appears to matter for the citations that EL articles subsequently receive.

• Risk disclosure and company unsystematic, systematic, and total risks

We examine the association between the communication about risk through annual reports and unsystematic, systematic, and total risks. We find that increased risk disclosure is associated with decreased unsystematic and total risks and increased systematic risk. Both effects of risk disclosure are based on two dimensions: First, more risk disclosure means that the company is transparent, which will attract stakeholders. Transparency also ensures stakeholder stability over time, which will improve firms’ performance and lower their unsystematic risk. Second, more risk information disclosure means that the company faces a higher level of risk. This implies a greater sensibility to downturns in the market and, consequently, a higher systematic risk.

Two complementary analyses are performed. The first of these analyses examines the impact of risk communication on company risks before, during and after the financial crisis of 2008. The second analysis distinguishes high-risk from low-risk companies. Our results suggest that investors’ risk sensitivity is higher during a crisis. In addition, we find that risk reporting reduces low-risk firms’ systematic risk but increases high-risk firms’ systematic risk.

• Risk sentiment and firms’ liquidity in the French market

This paper investigates the impact of risk sentiment on market liquidity by using panel data. We use six risk word lists; uncertain, weak model, negative, legal, opportunity, and environmental & social responsibility word lists to measure the risk sentiment. Concerning the liquidity proxies, we use three measures, quoted spread, effective spread, and adverse selection component. The results indicate that an intensive risk tone and uncertain information in annual reports lead to decreased liquidity. In addition, we find that risk sentiment variable impacts the liquidity but not vice versa.

• A study of The Impact of Risk Disclosure on Firms Reputation

We examine the impact of risk reporting on company reputation. Multiple empirical models were used In this study to explore this relationship (pooled OLS, fixed effects, random effect, and pooled logistic, conditional fixed effects logistic and random effects logistic models). We argue that risk reporting significantly and positively impacts company reputation. In addition, our findings indicate that this positive impact still exists for low-risk firms. However, risk disclosure does not have a significant effect on the firm’s reputation for very high-risk firms. We found that our results are robust for alternative measurements of the reputation variable and for several regression models. This study has implications for theory and practice. First, we confirm that the impact of risk disclosure on reputation does not differ from the impact of total firm disclosure (voluntary and mandatory). Second, our study motivates the firms to disclose more risk information to promote their reputation.

Books

• Zreik, O. (2017). Three essays on risk disclosure, Éditions universitaires européennes