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The given research paper examines the characteristics of German private investors regarding the probability of using robo-advisory-services. The used data set was gathered for this purpose (N = 305) to address the research question by using a logistic regression approach. The presented logit regression model results indicate that the awareness of sustainable aspects make a significant difference in the probability of using a sustainable robo-service. Additionally, our findings show that being male and cost-aware are positively associated with the use of a sustainable robo-advisor. Furthermore, the probability of use is 1.53 times higher among young and experienced investors. The findings in this paper provide relevant research findings for banks, asset managers, FinTechs, policy makers and financial practitioners to increase the adoption rate of robo-advice by introducing a sustainable offering.

Aspects of sustainable construction investment and real estate development (CIRED) and their interrelations during the period pre-, intra-, and post-COVID-19, are presented in the research. Applications of the topic model, environmental psychology theory, building life cycle method, and certain elements of bibliometrics, webometrics, article level metrics, altmetrics, and scientometrics make it possible to perform a quantitative analysis on CIRED. The CIRED topic model was developed in seven steps. This paper aims to present a literature review on CIRED throughout the pandemic and to look at the responses from the real estate and construction sector. This sector is a field that appears to be rapidly expanding, judging from the volume of current research papers. This review focuses on last year’s leading peer-reviewed journals. A combination of various keywords was applied for the review and the criteria for paper selections included construction investment, real estate development, civil engineering, COVID-19, and sustainability, as well as residential, industrial, commercial, land, and special purpose real estate, along with their risks, strategies, and trends. The articles reviewed for this paper, which analyzes three hypotheses, look at pre-, intra-, and post-pandemic CIRED. The three hypotheses were validated by analyzing scientific publications from around the world. Two innovative elements make this study stand out among the most advanced research on pre-, intra-, and post-pandemic CIRED. The first of the two innovations is the integrated analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19-related national policies, and business investment strategies relevant to CIRED and the interests of investors as well as on the impact a CIRED policy and investors make on the spread of COVID-19. In addition, this research demonstrates a marked increase in the effectiveness of a CIRED analysis, when the life cycle of a CIRED, the involved stakeholders with their own individual interests, the COVID-19 situation, and the external micro-, meso-, and macro-environments are covered comprehensively as a single entity.

The uncertainty of economic policy, a specific form of uncertainty, can affect both economic growth, and the effectiveness of the macroeconomic regulation and control policy. Existing studies have analyzed the impacts of economic policy uncertainty on investment, consumption, trade, and total factor survival, but there is no analysis of the effectiveness of macroeconomic regulation and control policies on output and technological progress in a deterministic environment. Output growth and technological progress show the performance of economic growth in gross and efficiency, respectively, which is the external performance and internal driving force of economic growth. To achieve long-term sustainable economic development, it is necessary to consider both the aggregate problem and technological progress. In this context, this paper attempts to explore the effectiveness of China’s macroeconomic regulation and control policy on output growth and technological progress under the economic policy uncertainty. Specifically, this paper first analyzes the effectiveness of macroeconomic regulation and control policy on China’s output growth and technological progress in an uncertain environment, and then makes an empirical study by constructing a time-varying parameter vector autoregression model (TVP-VAR). Furthermore, the simulation test of the relevant results is carried out using the counter-fact analysis method. The empirical results show that: (1) under the uncertainty environment, the direction of the effect of price monetary policy on output has not changed, the effect of interest rate increase on output growth is negative, and the impact is stronger in the short term than in the medium and long term, the effect of rising interest rates on technological progress is positive, and the effect intensity is also significant in the short term, but weak in the medium and long term, the effect of price monetary policy on output is stronger under moderate uncertainty. (2) Credit growth can promote output growth, and the regulation effect of credit growth on output growth is mainly reflected in the short term under the TVP-VAR model, the effect of credit growth on technological progress is not significant. Further research using counterfactual analysis shows that the uncertain environment will reduce the effect of credit policy on output growth, but the effect is not significant.

This paper analyzes the impact of executives’ hometown identification on corporate environmental social responsibility (CESR) using a sample of Chinese A-share-listed companies from 2007 to 2018. It finds that: the CESR scores of companies are higher when executives work in their hometowns, indicating that executives’ hometown identification significantly improves the fulfillment of CESR, mechanism tests show that the above relationship is more significant in regions with superior environmental quality, indicating that executives take CESR more seriously in their hometowns more due to social pressure, further tests found that executive characteristics, such as executive type and age, have a regulating effect on this relationship. In addition, the nature of property rights of listed companies also affects executives’ hometown identification. Executives of state-owned enterprises have a stronger hometown identification, which enhances the fulfillment of CESR to a higher extent. In the context of the micro level of the enterprise, this paper provides positive evidence that an informal system, named as “hometown identity”, can enhance the performance of CESR and the pressure effect implicitly behind the social network, which enriches and expands the research related to CESR fulfillment.

The paper investigates factors to financing from venture capital (VC) in the Peer to Peer (P2P) lending industry of China. We focus on the signal effects of founder-CEOs, human capital, and legitimacy on venture capital investment. An important issue for entrepreneurship research is how to reduce t information asymmetry between entrepreneurs and potential investors. This paper builds on the signal theory to explain how new ventures can signal their qualities and promising businesses to potential investors to obtain external investment. By using a total of 2388 new ventures in China’s P2P lending industry, this paper analyzed the effects of factors on VC investment. We found that the founder-CEO status and the legitimacy of third-party signals are crucial to obtain the support of venture capital. We found that the CEO’s international experience has positively significant on VC financing, but the industry experience of CEOs is insignificant to get VC investment. The results indicate that new venture should pay more attention to build the ways of signaling and legitimacy of new venture to get external resource providers.

Nowadays, we mainly depend on financial consultants or advisors to conduct risk assessments for individual investors before providing them with any investment advice or recommendations. Individual investors should understand the risk level of their investment choices and their investment decisions should match their risk profile. This process is usually conducted in face-to-face meetings. However, during the recent coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, which has seriously impacted daily life with social distancing, in order to maintain sustainability, contact-free advising, such as robo-advising, becomes more important. The aim of this paper was to assess customers&rsquo, risk in regards to investment and identify important risk factors needed to profile individual risk preferences, in order to prepare for robo-advising. Inductive content analysis is applied to classify 180 questions from 20 risk assessment questionnaires, sourced from banks and investment service providers, into different types. Then, the number of types is reduced by collapsing similar areas into broader higher order categories (the important risk factors). This paper also makes specific recommendations for the implementation of risk profiling in robo-advising.

Resolving the problem of excess production capacity through sustainable technological innovation is an important issue facing the Chinese economy in achieving high-quality development. The Guiding Opinions of the State Council on Resolving the Contradiction of Severe Overcapacity promulgated by the government in 2013 undoubtedly had a huge external impact on the traditionally competitive manufacturing market. This paper uses 6680 company-year sample observations of 1609 A-share manufacturing listed companies in China from 2010 to 2017 to examine the impact of capacity reduction pressure on &lsquo, corporate sustainable innovation&rsquo, (the strategic response made by the enterprise administrator to cope with the impacts of the external environment including economic, social and environmental aspects) investment and the moderating role of financing constraints on this relationship. The research shows that after the promulgation of the Guiding Opinions, the degree of overcapacity had a significant positive effect on the R&amp, D investment of enterprises, indicating that the policy to resolve overcapacity promoted their sustainable innovation investment. Such a phenomenon indicates that, to a certain extent, in the context of capacity reduction, companies have strong pressure and motivation to seek a way out through sustainable innovation. However, financing constraints have a significant inhibitory influence on the anti-forcing effect of the capacity reduction policy, indicating that the ability of enterprises to respond to external capacity reduction policies is subject to their own limited financing. Further investigation shows that capacity reduction pressure mainly promotes the sustainable innovation investment of private enterprises and has no significant impact on that of state-owned enterprises. This may be because private enterprises struggled more for survival during the transition period. The results of this paper provide a theoretical basis and reference value for the formulation of government policies and the development of enterprises.

This paper evaluated the environmental effects of socially responsible investments (SRIs) in European countries and analyzed the differentiation between them in terms of SRIs and selected features in the environmental dimension. The first section of the paper discusses contemporary trends in Europe and in certain European countries, whilst the second compares SR environmental investments and environmental factors in selected European countries from a multidimensional perspective. The aim of the study was to identify and evaluate these trends as well as to find similarities and differences between European countries, and subsequently to indicate groups of countries with similar approaches to pro-ecological investments. In order to solve the problem, descriptive and multidimensional statistical methods were used, namely correspondence analysis (CA). Although the research results clearly revealed upward tendencies in the volume of SR environmental investments in the analyzed period, they nonetheless represent a relatively low share in the total number of socially responsible investments. The overall growth in SRIs in Europe may have resulted from the more intense activities of policymakers in some countries as a consequence of concluding agreements reached during the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in 2015. The results of the study also revealed no significant correlations between SR environmental investments and environmental variables among the European countries analyzed, hence, there is no substantial evidence that investors&rsquo, assets contribute to the improvement of the environment.

Management financial incentives are an effective way to attract, retain and stimulate managers with beneficial spillover effects on firm performance. This paper explores the relationship between board and executive management compensation and remunerations and the financial performance of European companies from various industries in a sustainable development framework. The sample covers 1594 firms with data extracted from Thomson Reuters Eikon (Refinitiv, New York, NY, USA) databases from 2019 and a selection of specific indicators. The complex methodological endeavor encompassed by our research embeds several robust and two-stage least squares (2SLS/IV) regression models, structural equation modelling, including latent class analysis and network analysis through Gaussian Graphical Models. Main results bring to the fore that management financial incentives/packages reverberate positively and significantly on the performance of European firms, leading to important upwards in enterprise value and company earnings. Moreover, the sustainability indicators (committee, policy, energy use, renewable energies) also have positive effects on the financial performance of analyzed companies, being discussed extensively within the paper.

Although technological acquisitions have attracted much attention as a prominent means of open innovation that allows firms to complement internal innovation, their shareholder value creation effects should be influenced by whether the acquiring family businesses can successfully realize technological synergies. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether market participants perceive family businesses to create more value when undertaking technological acquisitions. Using a sample of 614 acquisitions by 71 family businesses between 2000 and 2014 in South Korea, an event study methodology is adopted. Empirical analysis yields strong support for the prediction that the stock market does not perceive family businesses to be able to create superior synergy through technological acquisitions compared to when they undertake nontechnological acquisitions. The competitive landscape also has implications for the shareholder value creation effects of technological acquisitions by family businesses. Overall, the findings of this paper provide insight into the shareholder wealth implications of technological acquisitions undertaken by family businesses.

Every large or small enterprise needs to have financial liquidity and to be able to generate profits to develop. It is not important in which sector it operates, whether it is a private or public one, but profits and safety are two elements every enterprise is not able to function without. The low performance of these two measures can cause a number of difficulties for managers. To avoid this, leading companies, especially the smallest ones, should optimize the trade credit management policy. Most often, SMEs&rsquo, (small and medium-sized enterprises) owners try to work together as part of a group purchasing organization, which positively affects trade credit management. The aim of the paper is to present the trade credit management strategy in Polish group purchasing organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study uses data on the construction sector because it is one of the most important segments of the Polish economy, which is financed to a large extent with trade credit. The paper indicates the mechanisms whose applications allowed SMEs operating in purchasing groups to change trade credit management strategies in such a way that these units could operate calmly and safely in the market. These changes could be observed in purchasing goods with a large reserve, strictly controlling all receivables, switching to cash sales or limiting sales on long-term trade credit. The analysis showed that enterprises changed trade credit management strategies from moderately conservative to highly conservative.

After 2014, China focused on supply-side reform and put forward the concept of replacing old driving with new driving force, which can create a new round of economic improvement. From the perspective of the conversion of old and new driving forces of enterprises, this paper takes the listed enterprises in China&rsquo, s a-share manufacturing industry from 2016 to 2018 as samples. This paper also discusses the &ldquo, Net Effect&rdquo, of CEO turnover on the conversion of new and old driving forces of enterprises. The results reflect that CEO turnover has a negative effect on the conversion of old and new driving force. Moving forward, when the CEO and chairman changes at the same time or the ownership of the enterprise turns to state-owned, the change of CEO has a higher degree of prevention on the conversion of old and new force. The number of board&rsquo, s conferences and the degree of equity balance will increase the negative effect of CEO turnover on the conversion of old and new driving force.

This paper theoretically explores the impact of the incentive preferences of executives (i.e., short-term incentives and long-term incentives) on corporate social responsibility (CSR) decisions (i.e., institutional CSR and technical CSR). Further, the paper presents the mechanism through which executives influence CSR activities by the pressures from financial analysts and institutional investors supervision. Using a large sample of China-listed firms over 2007&ndash, 2017, we achieve some helpful empirical results. The executives with short-term incentives tend to implement technical CSR strategy, while those with long-term incentives tend to implement institutional CSR strategy. Executives with short-term incentives, compared with those with long-term incentives, show stronger inter-temporal tradeoffs behaviors in the earnings pressure context. Furthermore, dedicated institutional investors can effectively attenuate the hypocritical behaviors of executives, and the effectiveness of governance shows a positive relationship with investors&rsquo, horizon. Our findings enrich the understanding on the relationship between the executives and CSR decisions in the earnings pressure context and further helps to perfect the institutional design in China&rsquo, s listed companies.

Research and development (R&D) investment is widely recognised as one of the crucial elements of generating the competitive advantage of contemporary companies. At the same time, it is also considered to represent one of the key determinants of overall sustainable development. Global competition, which is becoming increasingly harsh and forces companies to provide value-added products, processes and services, constitutes a reason why R&D investment is indispensable in contemporary business operations as they facilitate keeping the companies’ position in the market in terms of their competitiveness. The main aim of this paper is therefore to examine the impact of R&D expenditures on corporate performance. Using a multiple regression analysis, two different panel datasets covering Slovenian and world R&D companies are analysed. This gives a unique opportunity to obtain comprehensive and interesting findings, representing the main originality and value of the paper. The empirical results reveal that R&D expenditures are not effective in the short-term period and bring certain benefits in the long-term period. The findings of this paper provide several important theoretical and practical implications.

The objective of this paper is to detect the arbitrage opportunity and to manage the bubbles in the Korean real estate market based on a binomial American option pricing model with heteroscedasticity. The limitation of previous research where the real options framework was first introduced is its macro-economic implication based on the utilization of the general housing indices. Therefore, in this paper, we extensively apply the model to different residential types and regions. The results suggest that the model can detect the realistic and reasonable trend of housing bubbles and the arbitrage opportunities for different times, residential types, and regions. We also simulate two scenarios to encourage the trades of real estate assets: promotion of early exercise, and the shortened Contract period. Performing arbitrage trading based on these two methods, we discover that both approaches effectively reduce the housing bubbles in all residential types and regions. Specifically, the promotion of early exercise reduces the housing bubble more effectively than the shortened Contract period. Hence, we advocate the utilization of the information obtained from the model to boost the transactions in the Korean real estate market in order to reduce the bubble-related risks and to support sustainable economic growth.

In this paper, we present a comparative investigation of the multifractal properties of seven Central and Eastern European (CEE) stock markets using recent financial data up to August 2018 by employing seasonal and trend decompositions before applying multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis. We find that stock indices returns exhibit long-range correlations, supporting the idea that the stock markets in question are not efficient markets and have not reached a mature stage of market development. The results of the paper are of interest to investors looking for opportunities in these stock exchanges and also to policy makers in their endeavour of realizing institutional reforms in order to increase stock market efficiency and to support the sustainable growth of the financial markets.

The article presents a new approach to the solution to the paradox of value based on the theory of marginal utility of the Austrian School of Economics. The new approach is based on the theory of compound interests and economic bubbles. The study presents valuable theoretical insight towards sustainable economic development. The paper provides a brief formulation of the theory of compound interests, introduces the structure of compound interests model, and shows the relations between simple and compound interests as well as dimensionless interests. It reveals the saturation phenomena, and emphasizes its impact on economic and financial bubbles. The relation between the value of paradox and the price bubbles is presented. The article also explains the possibilities of the phenomenology of growth in formulating the paradox of saturation and studying the paradox of value. The phenomenological method allows to relate prices and financial and economic bubbles into a general entirety. Therefore, this paper deals with very important sustainable development issues as it discusses the market saturation phenomena, economic bubbles, and emotional consumer behavior. The limitations of behavioral theories are pointed out and their misunderstandings of information cascades are emphasized. The article provides the explanation of the nature of economic bubbles by employing the theory of compound interests.

There is a general agreement that extensive remuneration gaps may cause pressing environmental, social, and economic problems. Thus, a critical question to be answered is what is the effect of being at the forefront of corporate sustainability on the CEO&ndash, employee pay gap. This paper addresses the question by examining empirical evidence from 415 constituents of the S&amp, P 1500 index over the years 2006&ndash, 2016. For the above period, we found a positive relationship between a strong commitment to sustainable development at the firm level and the CEO&ndash, employee pay differential. Additionally, firms characterized by higher performance, growth potential, and financial robustness constituted more dispersed salary distribution environments. The findings also suggest that CEO gender has a significant effect on the pay gap with a moderating influence of female CEOs. The paper contributes to the literature by shedding additional light on the urgent need for the implementation of a limit capping the CEO&ndash, worker pay ratio at a certain, responsible level as one of screening criteria used by sustainability ranking providers. Furthermore, it also shows that leading corporations in the area of sustainability do not implement any serious solutions in the above area on their own accord.

The research gravitates around ethical, sustainable banking activity in an attempt to measure its responsible impact, which is proxy by the efficiency of their financial intermediation function. The paper focuses on ethical banks included in the membership of the European Federation of Ethical and Alternative Banks. Ethical banks are in the spotlight as they are explicitly involved in channeling financial resources towards start-ups and investment projects characterized by the social, cultural and environmental value-added, by encouraging the development of responsible, durable projects. The data envelopment analysis technique was used for computing the relative efficiency score which applies a linear programming algorithm for aggregating multiple inputs and outputs specific to banking activity. The main research stages developed within the paper consist of the following: (i) Computation of efficiency scores for each ethical bank in a timeframe of four successive years, (ii) developing the efficient frontier, (iii) performing discrimination between efficient and less efficient ethical banks and making a ranking. Therefore, the results emphasize ethical banks&rsquo, comparative performance, in terms of efficiency, and allow the identification of resembling peers whose monitoring may help the bank in achieving a further efficiency status. Overall, the results show that a single ethical bank constantly fulfills its mission to be socially responsible and exhibits a persistent efficiency status while the remaining ones face heterogeneity in terms of efficient business conduct.

The paper analyzes the determinants of the loan loss provision (LLP) of 22 commercial banks in Pakistan from 2010 to 2017. The motive of the research is that LLP is a measure of credit risk as a proxy for bank risk-taking behavior profits and banks&rsquo, sustainability. Especially after the occurrence of a global financial crisis. The quantitative research method of data collection from Bureau Van Dijk&rsquo, s BankFocus portal and the World Bank&rsquo, s World Development Indicators. Other than considering specific bank variables such as capital adequacy ratio, return on average equity, and government securities, the effects of macroeconomic variable inflation and lending interest rates are explicitly studied. The model of pooled ordinary least squares (POLS), fixed effect (FE), panel corrected standard error (PCSE), and panel data estimation in the form of a general method of moments (GMM) two-step system is used to find the risk-taking behavior of banks in Pakistan. The results obtained by the use of inflation (INF) as an instrumental variable of LLP are highly dependable with a negative impact on loan loss provision. Lending interest rate (LIR) has a positive and significant relationship with LLP and contribute in the study of macroeconomic variables for bank risk-taking, excessive amount of interest rate was not beneficial for banks to earn profits especially during the economic crises. Return on average equity (ROAE) significantly moderates LLP with a negative interaction and helped the bank with profitable operations and save bank from solvency. Capital adequacy ratio (CAR) and government securities (GOV) are insignificant to LLP. The result is robust by measure of endogeneity, and highlights the important role of commercial banks&rsquo, sustainability to explain risk-taking behavior in Pakistan with the intention to increase profits after the occurrence of financial crises. The study further contributes to future research on managerial policy and decision making. In summary, the paper on loan loss provision has the capacity to forecast commercial banks&rsquo, credit risk for risk-taking in an emerging country.

For the career development of chief executive officers (CEOs), the existing literature lacks research from the perspectives of gender and the environment. Starting with the perspective of the environment, and through the adoption of the World Bank Survey Data on Chinese Enterprises and China&rsquo, s Comprehensive Social Survey (CGSS), this paper addresses the question: &ldquo, Why do companies choose female CEOs?&rdquo, The analysis examines 15 aspects, including enterprise scale, age, industry, owner, product market, market environment, city level, etc. The research findings are as follows. (1) The corporate environment has an impact on CEO gender, and there are differences in its nature and the degree of impact. Enterprise size, state-owned shareholding, radiation effect, market environment, and gender culture have a significant negative impact on female CEOs, while product features, industry characteristics, and female owners have a significantly positive impact on female CEOs. (2) In terms of the impact mechanism, the impact of the meso-environment on female CEOs is significantly adjusted by the macro-environment. This paper extends the existing theory from the perspectives of gender and the environment. Relevant policy recommendations are proposed to provide a theoretical basis for the government to promote women&rsquo, s employment policies and provide effective suggestions for promoting women&rsquo, s career development.

This paper analyses the link between exchange rates and stock markets in four Central and Eastern European countries. We simultaneously explore the comovements of foreign exchange markets and stock markets at the cross-country level and the link between these two markets within each country while employing a Dynamic Conditional Correlation Mixed Data Sampling (DCC-MIDAS) model. Such an approach to financial markets conveys a much more visible picture of the existing patterns of financial integration between these markets that would otherwise be neglected. The estimates reveal significant differences between the patterns of correlation in our sample countries. First, the paper finds a quite low degree of convergence between foreign exchange markets, with rising correlations during some of the crisis episodes. Second, both the 2004 European Union enlargement and the European sovereign debt crisis underpin the stock market comovements in the Central and Eastern European countries. Third, the correlations between the exchange rate returns and stock markets rise mostly during the European sovereign debt crisis and to a lesser extent during the global financial crisis, revealing signs of contagion and lower portfolio diversification opportunities. These results are of utmost relevance for the process of financial integration and they also have important implications for policy makers, risk management, and investors.

The objective of this paper is to identify the main barriers to sustainable private equity market development in emerging European countries. The cross-country panel data analysis that was used in this paper will focus on the main determinants of the private equity investments over the period 2000&ndash, 2013. We followed the methodology developed by Gompers and Lerner in order to estimate a panel data model with fixed and random effects. Starting from the existing literature, we analyzed variables that were confirmed by the previous studies and we also introduce new variables, such as the corruption index, uncertainty index, and regulation. The results of our study confirmed the existing hypothesis regarding the barriers to private equity development, such as the unemployment rate, the lack of exit mechanisms due to the low level of market capitalization, and the corruption.

This paper constructs a heterogeneous agent model for the foreign exchange market that is based on the law of supply and demand and includes carry trade, central bank intervention, and macroeconomic fundamentals. With the artificial intelligence method of the unscented Kalman filter, this paper investigates carry traders&rsquo, expectation formation and risk aversion and the impact of their activities on the movement of the Chinese yuan exchange rate and on the efficiency of central bank intervention. The findings demonstrate that carry traders&rsquo, activities are partially responsible for fluctuations in the Chinese yuan exchange rate, carry traders behave with obvious risk aversion, their activities tend to weaken the ability of the central bank to intervene in China&rsquo, s foreign exchange market, and the volatility of the Chinese yuan exchange rate and the weight of carry traders are negatively related. Based on these empirical results, specific suggestions for exploring sustainable financial resources are provided.

This paper investigates the impact of an acquirer&rsquo, s experience on the acquisition of private firms (i.e., private target acquisition) in high-technology industries by analyzing a dataset of NASDAQ-listed firms operating in information technology (IT) industries. Specifically, this paper examines whether two types of experience (i.e., early venture capital (VC)-backed experience and prior mergers and acquisitions (M&amp, A) experience) matter to the acquisition. We find that both types of experience have positive effects on private target acquisition, while only prior M&amp, A experience positively influences public target acquisition, implying that early VC-backed experience is effective in mitigating information asymmetry related to private target acquisition and exploring opportunities for value creation. We also find that an acquirer&rsquo, s growth performance and absorptive capacity prior to the acquisition enhance the positive effects of the experiences on private target acquisition.

The efficient functioning of capital markets ensures that information on companies&rsquo, sustainable development endeavors is fully and instantly incorporated into stock prices, which facilitates them in raising capital requirements at a lower cost. It, however, is impaired when market participants are inclined to behavioral biases. The Adaptive Market Hypothesis predicts that such behavioral biases are evolutionary. In that sense, market participants are capable of learning their behavioral mistakes and adapting to market conditions over time. Based on this perspective, this paper aims to explore how learning occurs within individual investors to reduce their herd bias. The data was collected by distributing a web-based self-administrated questionnaire to a sample of 1000 individual investors of the Colombo Stock Exchange, who were randomly selected during a period from March to August 2018. A total of 189 responses were received, which were analyzed using the structural equation modelling technique to test the hypotheses of the theoretical model. The results show that learning takes place when investors cognitively evaluate past trading experiences, which is induced by their desire for learning, and, consequently, reduces their herd bias. However, as the model predicts, strengthening this cognitive reflection from the relationship with the investment advisor and social learning among investors through their peer-relationships appear to be absent due to uncertain market conditions prevailed during the study period and dominance of unsophisticated investors in the market. From these findings, this paper concludes that the cognitive reflection of past experiences and the nature of the trading environment determine the extent of learning within individual investors.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) gradually deepens its influence on enterprises and rapidly becomes one of the important issues in the research field. This paper selects China&rsquo, s A-share listed companies which issued social responsibility reports from 2011 to 2015, and studies the impact of state-owned shares on the disclosure level of CSR. Furthermore, this paper uses cross terms to study the role of different financing methods (issuing bonds and cross-listing) in the impact of state-owned shares on the disclosure level of CSR. The results show that state-owned shares and the proportion of state-owned shares have a significant positive impact on the disclosure level of CSR. Both the issuing of bonds and cross-listing can promote this positive effect. The results of robust test also support this conclusion. Finally, specific recommendations are put forward.

Pricing multi-asset options has always been one of the key problems in financial engineering because of their high dimensionality and the low convergence rates of pricing algorithms. This paper studies a method to accelerate Monte Carlo (MC) simulations for pricing multi-asset options with stochastic volatilities. First, a conditional Monte Carlo (CMC) pricing formula is constructed to reduce the dimension and variance of the MC simulation. Then, an efficient martingale control variate (CV), based on the martingale representation theorem, is designed by selecting volatility parameters in the approximated option price for further variance reduction. Numerical tests illustrated the sensitivity of the CMC method to correlation coefficients and the effectiveness and robustness of our martingale CV method. The idea in this paper is also applicable for the valuation of other derivatives with stochastic volatility.

This paper studies whether economic policy uncertainty (EPU) influences internal control (IC). Exploiting EPU as an exogenous shock and using unique internal control index data at the firm level from China, we can make causal inferences about the EPU effect on IC, and provide new insight into firms&rsquo, sustainability. Our results show that firms tend to cope with higher EPU by improving IC, indicating their efforts to ensure sustainability development. We also find that this trend is intensified for firms localized in regions with a lower marketization degree, state-owned firms, or firms with fewer analysts following. Further analyses show that EPU significantly reduces the internal control auditing fees, hence backing up the association between EPU and IC. Unlike the previous literature, this paper shows the important role of internal control for firms in coping with EPU, which is of crucial significance to how firms seek to adhere to sustainable development and how economic policy works best.

Blockchain technology is the most cutting-edge technology in the field of financial technology, which has attracted extensive attention from governments, financial institutions and investors of various countries. Blockchain and finance, as an interdisciplinary, cross-technology and cross-field topic, has certain limitations in both theory and application. Based on the bibliometrics data of Web of Science, this paper conducts data mining on 759 papers related to blockchain technology in the financial field by means of co-word analysis, bi-clustering algorithm and strategic coordinate analysis, so as to explore hot topics in this field and predict the future development trend. The experimental results found ten research topics in the field of blockchain combined with finance, including blockchain crowdfunding, Fintech, encryption currency, consensus mechanism, the Internet of Things, digital financial, medical insurance, supply chain finance, intelligent contract and financial innovation. Among them, blockchain crowdfunding, Fintech, encryption currency and supply chain finance are the key research directions in this research field. Finally, this paper also analyzes the opportunities and risks of blockchain development in the financial field and puts forward targeted suggestions for the government and financial institutions.

There is a conceptual problem in the adequate application of internal audit and internal control in the real business of the marketing environment. Although both of these managerial tools are theoretically defined, they are practically interchangeable in business. This limits their application. It is therefore necessary to focus on both concepts and make the theory and practice more precise or remove any overlaps. The aim of this paper is therefore a theoretical and practical comparison of internal audit and internal control concepts in the marketing environment. To fulfil this purpose and verify the hypotheses, this paper uses computer assisted self interviewing. The research was conducted in Q1 2021 with a sample of 3052 small and medium enterprises from the international environment of the EU 27. The research conclusions show a strong correlation of the theoretical perception of the terms of internal audit and internal control. At the same time, they show a weak correlation with the audit and control tools used in practice. They also define audit as planned independent assurance (soft consultation) and control as operational managerial assurance (hard comparison). This defines and clarifies scientific theories for managerial practice, thus enhancing and increasing the efficiency of internal audits and internal control in the business environment.

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the relationship between debt and national output mediated by a measure of the quality of state governance. Using WGIs dataset of 106 countries for the period 1996–2015, the paper analyzes the mediated effect of governance on debt-growth relationship. For this purpose, we use the fixed effect (LSDV) and system GMM estimation technique in order to overcome the possible problem of endogeneity. Results show the non-linear pattern between public debt and economic growth via governance. Although, public debt has negative impact on economic growth, but the results are statistically positive and significant when public debt is interacted with governance, which confirms that governance is a channel by which public debt influences economic growth. Moreover, we calculate the threshold of governance which shows that the public debt has positive impact on economic growth when the governance level is higher than the threshold and adversely affects the economic growth in the case of low level of governance than threshold. Evidence from this study reveals the fact that governance plays a mediating role in debt-growth relationship as there is a pattern of complementarity between public debt and governance: the higher the level of governance, the lesser the adverse effect of public debt on economic growth.

This paper examines the spillover effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on Chinese domestic food exports under firm heterogeneity. By using a rich firm-level panel data of China’s food firms, the empirical analyses rely on the first-order difference generalized method of moments (GMM) for industry-level analysis, and Heckman’s two-stage method for firm-level analysis. The results show that the horizontal FDI led to a positive spillover effect on domestic food industry exports, varying across food subindustries. The paper also finds that a large part of the promotion effect is driven through extensive margin (the probability to export) instead of intensive margin (the quantities of exports) in firm-level analysis. The heterogeneous export spillovers across food firms are further considered to depend on their nature characteristics, like productivity, size, and ownership. Moreover, the heterogeneities of FDI origins and business purpose are confirmed to influence export spillovers. The estimation results are quite robust for different types of regression specifications and substitutions of variable measurement. These findings provide suggestions for decision-makers to carefully assess the impact of FDI and make policy for the sustainable development of domestic food exports.

Corporate governance (CG) is not an abstract goal. It exists to serve the bank’s purpose by giving a framework through which investors, directors, and the top management can efficiently follow its objectives. Subsequently, it boosts the financial performance of the bank for its shareholders. This paper explores CG and its impacts on financial performance from the evidence collected from selected commercial banks (CB) in China. The data sample for this research comprises selected CBs in China for the period from 2008 to 2019. Applying selection standards provides us a data sample of 17 CBs. We employed the generalized method of moments (GMM) regression model constructed on 170 observations to identify the variables’ relationship. Our findings show that female independent directors positively and significantly affect bank financial performance. Despite the literature review, we found that the existence of female directors alone does not positively and significantly improve banks’ financial performance. The finding suggests that female directors are more efficient when they are selected as independent directors. The findings show that CEO duality affects bank financial performance positively and significantly. CEO duality strengthens the financial performance of CBs because of the solidarity of the order it presents. The results also show that CEO shareholding and financial performance of Chinese CBs have a positively significant bond with each other. This result suggests that a blend of CG instruments is more impressive than one CG component. The investigation results added a new dimension to the governance literature that could be an important source of knowledge for policymakers and regulators to improve the current governance structure for better performance across countries. This paper support principal-agent theory and the author also provide some help for the theories that regulators should support gender quotas in the board of directors of banks to decrease risk-taking behavior.

This paper explores the relationship between one of the major aspects of the internal mechanism of corporate governance, i.e., the board of directors, and the corporate strategy of cooperation. The study was designed to investigate whether certain board of director characteristics have an influence on the propensity to cooperate in Spanish listed non-financial firms. Our findings reveal that the propensity to cooperate in Spanish firms is driven more by a tight &ldquo, management effect&rdquo, whereby the highest probability of occurrence is related to firms with duality on their boards and a lower proportion of nominee directors representing controlling shareholders. This paper adds evidence to the corporate governance-corporate strategy (alliance propensity) discussion in a continental country such as Spain.

The capital structure decision is one of the most vital financial decisions of the corporation that consists of determining the optimal combination of equity and debt for the companies that would reduce the cost of capital. The examination of the capital structure has always gained importance especially in the theoretical and empirical studies while there is no study of the relationship between the environmental, social, and governance (ESG), the ownership structure, and the cost of capital. In this context, this paper aims to examine the potential impacts of the ESG disclosure and ownership structure on the cost of capital by using a sample of 30 companies listed on the UAE financial markets (Abu Dhabi Stock Exchange and Dubai Financial Market) during the period 2010&ndash, 2019. The data show that there is an increasing trend in the different non-financial corporate disclosures. The empirical results of various models show that the ESG disclosure, the insider and the institutional ownerships have negative and significant impacts on the cost of capital. Furthermore, the environmental and the governance disclosures reduce the cost of capital. This paper demonstrates the strong role played by the ESG disclosure and the ownership structure in reducing the cost of capital for the companies. These results would encourage the companies in implementing the best practices of the non-financial disclosures and regulating their corporate governance mechanisms.

This paper conducts a systematic review of the research work in the field of sustainable investment for identifying research gaps and laying down research agenda for the future. Articles on sustainable investment published in journals indexed at the Web of Science during 1989 and 2018 (so far) are reviewed for the purpose of this research. A total of 225 papers were found through the search criteria, out of which 213 papers were selected for review. The paper identifies gaps in the literature that can be considered as opportunities for future study. The analysis of these articles led us to note the need for an agenda that can present a holistic framework of sustainable investment with lesser variations and increased acceptability. The research agenda proposed by the paper may help researchers in framing their research problems around the gaps identified. Sustainable investment is a potential solution to social and ecological issues by transforming the financial markets to have more accountability for their impacts. Therefore, it is important to carry out extensive research in this field so as to develop it as an applied field of investment. There has so far been no attempt to perform a systematic review in the field of sustainable investment for a period of 20 years, as has been made in this paper.

This paper uses an actuarial model to evaluate the effect of poverty alleviation policy on the sustainability of China&rsquo, s basic pension funding for urban and rural residents (BPFUUR). Because of the poverty alleviation policy, China&rsquo, s basic endowment insurance for urban and rural residents (BEIURR) has been given the responsibility of helping the poor through insurance and by increasing the income of the elderly. On the basis of summarizing the current situation of BEIURR, this paper simulated and predicted the impact of poverty alleviation policy on the short term (2020&ndash, 2025) and medium term (2025&ndash, 2050) sustainability of China&rsquo, s BPFUUR. The results show that: (1) The sustainability of the fund will inevitably face challenges, (2) The per capita contribution level will be at a low level for a long time, (3) The birth tide brought by the two-child policy has a positive impact on the medium-term sustainability of the fund, (4) Poverty eradication mainly affects the short-term current deficit, but not the medium-term accumulated deficit, (5) The higher the payment, the better the sustainability of the funding in the short and medium term. According to the above results, this paper puts forward some countermeasures, such as insisting on family planning, optimizing the adjustment system for basic pension funds, and improving the treatment of basic pensions.

This paper is focused on the measurement of interest rate risk of nonfinancial firms. The measurement is the initial step in the risk management, which, in the context of financial risks, it is expected to lead to better levels of enterprises&rsquo, financial sustainability. Concretely, we checked the performance of alternative estimation procedures of the implied equity duration as a measure of the exposure to interest rate risk of firms listed on a small stock market. Previous evidence in the US stock market shows that when the implied equity duration is computed using industry-specific parameters instead of market parameters, significant differences arise in their absolute and relative values and even in their ranking. In this paper, we checked the robustness of these results when we moved to a smaller stock market. To do so, we replicated previous analyses carried out in the Spanish stock market but using alternative estimation procedures. We conclude that significant differences arise in the implied equity duration estimations when we consider industry-specific parameters instead of market parameters. This finding in a small stock market is in line with previous evidence found for the US stock market.

Financial development is one of the main sources of economic growth, whether financial deepening can lower the income inequality between urban and rural areas has been the focus of policy makers and researchers. Using data from 31 provinces in China, from 2002 to 2013, this paper examines the impact of financial deepening on income inequality between urban and rural areas. These empirical results show that financial deepening is significantly negatively associated with urban&ndash, rural income disparity, that is, for every 1% increase in financial deepening urban&ndash, rural income disparity can be reduced by about 0.5%. Further research has investigated that the influence of financial deepening on income disparity has a selective effect. From the decomposition effect of financial deepening, we also find that the proximity effect of the Eastern and Central regions is higher than that of the local effect, while the local effect of the Western region is higher than that of the Eastern and Central regions, but the proximity effect is not significant. The conclusion of this paper is of great significance to further deepen financial reform, improve the quality of financial development, and achieve sustainable development of economy.

This paper aims to investigate the perceived risk after the Tianjin port explosion event and its impact on property value. In addition to focusing on the relationship between homebuyers&rsquo, risk perception and property sales price, this paper also considers the risk perception of property sellers via the sale-to-list ratio. By using the difference-in-differences method and the sample from the property agent, we found that the explosion event generated a long-time effect on the public and property market in the city of Tianjin. Relative to those properties far away from the explosion site, the sales price and the sale-to-list ratio of the property near the explosion site were detected to have significant drops for the first six months after the explosion event. The temporal decrease of the relative sales price and the sale-to-list ratio are the evidence of short period overreaction from the public, which decays over time. This study demonstrates an indirect method to estimate the perceived risk of the general public and provides valuable insight into sustainable port management policies.

Combining resource-based theory and social exchange theory, this paper studies the role that political connections play in maintaining the sustainability of enterprises’ R&D investment. Furthermore, this paper discusses the moderating effect of policy burdens and ownership on political connections and R&D investment. Based on the Euler equation model, this study used dynamic panel data from Chinese listed companies over the period 2006–2015 to test the hypothesis. The results show that the sustainability of R&D investments of enterprises are more likely to face the threat of financing constraints. However, political connections can help maintain the sustainability of R&D investment of enterprises, but this effect exists only at the local political level, and firms need to undertake a policy burden in return. Additionally, this effect is more effective in private enterprises than non-private enterprises.

This paper uses moment analysis, capital asset pricing model (CAPM) statistics, stochastic dominance (SD) test, and volume analysis to investigating why the market for Taiwan warrants can be sustained but not in China. Our moment analysis shows that buying in China warrants has a higher likelihood of losses. Our CAPM analysis shows that both the Sharpe ratio and Jensen index for warrants from the Chinese market are too negative. The Treynor index shows that Chinese warrants are highly volatile. Our SD analysis shows that risk averters prefer to invest in Chinese warrants compared to Taiwanese warrants, implying that the warrant issuers prefer to issue Taiwanese warrants than Chinese warrants. Using volume analysis, the Chinese warrant market is much more active, implying more speculative activities in China than in Taiwan. All the above could lead to China&rsquo, s decision to close its warrant market. The findings in the paper are useful for academics, investors, and policy makers.

The literature on credit availability for rural households primarily focuses on the supply side, and largely ignores the demand side. This paper divided the credit process into three stages using large-scale household survey data. It also reviewed the credit process in other developing countries. A dual sample selection model was used to deal with the dual self-selection problem, which has been neglected in previous studies. This paper found that the main obstacle that farmers faced in obtaining financing was fear of applying for credit from formal financial institutions. In addition, there were significant differences in the determinants of different stages of the credit process of rural households.

As a special financial institution, the financial company has a significant impact on the financial market and real economy. Therefore, further study of the efficiency of financial companies is of great practical significance. China&rsquo, s financial company is equivalent to the &ldquo, internal bank&rdquo, of its affiliated group. Therefore, this paper refers to the quantitative analysis and evaluation method of the banking industry, combined with the data characteristics of the financial company&rsquo, s industry. This paper carries out quantitative analysis and evaluation of the efficiency of 79 Chinese enterprise group finance companies from 2011 to 2016 through the DEA model and the Malmquist index model. The results are as follows: From the static point of view (based on the DEA model), the overall efficiency of Chinese financial companies is low and the efficiency is less affected by scale efficiency than that of pure technical efficiency, from the industry classification, the efficiency of oil processing, steel, and nonferrous metal financial companies is better than other industries. From the dynamic point of view (based on the Malquist index model), the overall efficiency of financial companies from 2011 to 2016 has been slightly improved and the efficiency is easily influenced by the change of scale efficiency, from the industry category, the changes of the efficiency, scale efficiency and pure technical efficiency of financial companies of military industry are fastest, and the technical progress of the auto industry financial companies is optimal.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the obligation of a company to pursue long-term goals, and is an important part of a sustainable society. It is related not only to the survival and sustainable development of the company, but also to the expectations of the public. CSR is an important way for companies to disclose non-financial information. Information disclosure can alleviate information asymmetry effectively, improve the quality of internal control, and affect the occurrence of insider trading. However, the existing research has paid less attention to the impact of non-financial information on CSR and insider trading, as well as the impact of the corporate nature and disclosure motivation on this relationship. This paper takes China&rsquo, s 2011&ndash, 2016 Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies as a sample to study the relationship between CSR and insider trading. The results show the following. (1) CSR and insider trading have a significant negative correlation. (2) From the perspective of the nature of the enterprise, the CSR of non-state-owned enterprises can significantly suppress the occurrence of insider trading, while the relationship is not significant for state-owned enterprises. (3) From the perspective of disclosure motivation, voluntary disclosure can significantly suppress the occurrence of insider trading. However, mandatory disclosure and semi-mandatory disclosure are not significant. The research in this paper is of great significance to encourage enterprises to fulfill their social responsibilities and improve the supervision of illegal insider trading.

This paper examines the association between analyst coverage and corporate social performance, using comprehensive donation expense data from Korea. Following analyst &ldquo, investor recognition view&rdquo, analyst coverage might be the one of the key determinants of firms&rsquo, CSP to higher firms&rsquo, reputational capital. The empirical results suggest that analyst coverage is, on average, positively associated with corporate social performance (CSP) and that this positive association is more pronounced in a non-chaebol (i.e., non-large industrial conglomerate) sample. Further this result is consistent with a battery of robustness tests, such as alternative use of CSP, interaction analysis, two-stage least square regression (2SLS) and alternative use of analyst coverage. This paper goes beyond prior literature using audited donation expense and chaebol data, this paper shows that analysts could partially provide information to enhance firms&rsquo, reputations and thus their reputational capital by attending to CSP which would be regarded as pertinent firms&rsquo, sustainability. Furthermore, this tendency is more pronounced in relatively lower-reputation firms, such as non-chaebol ones in Korea. Mainstream literature on CSR is conducted within the context of developed countries, such as the U.S. or the U.K., leaving the empirical question as to whether such results apply to other developing countries such as Korea. So, using unique corporate giving data, this paper investigate analyst coverage might enhance firms&rsquo, CSP even in a relatively poor information environment such as Korea.

This paper investigates the influence of effective tax payment on the CEO promotion in local State Owned Enterprise (SOE) in China. Based on the analysis of listed local SOEs in China from 2004 to 2010, this paper tests the relationship between CEO promotion and tax payment. In addition, the moderating effect of pyramid layer is tested. This paper finds that there is a significant positive relationship between Effective Tax Rate (ETR) and CEO promotion, which suggests that CEOs may be aggressive in tax payment to please the local governments, who ultimately own the local SOEs. The current paper also finds that the relationship between ETR and CEO promotion is weakened as pyramid layers increase. Our conclusions enrich the literature on CEO turnover and the role of pyramid structure. The conclusions are also helpful for the SOEs&rsquo, reform in China and other developing countries. First, this paper is among the first to investigate the relationship between ETR and CEO turnover. Second, this paper highlights the function of pyramid structure in mitigating government intervention. Third, this paper also adds to the research on effective tax.

With the increasing volume and active transaction of real estate properties, mass appraisal has been widely adopted in many countries for different purposes, including assessment of property tax. In this paper, 104 papers are selected for the systematic literature review of mass appraisal models and methods from 2000 to 2018. The review focuses on the application trend and classification of mass appraisal and highlights a 3I-trend, namely AI-Based model, GIS-Based model and MIX-Based model. The characteristics of different mass appraisal models are analyzed and compared. Finally, the future trend of mass appraisal based on model perspective is defined as “mass appraisal 2.0”: mass appraisal is the appraisal procedure of model establishment, analysis and test of group of properties as of a given date, combined with artificial intelligence, geo-information systems, and mixed methods, to better model the real estate value of non-spatial and spatial data.

Green bonds have both &ldquo, bond&rdquo, and &ldquo, green&rdquo, attributes and are one of the important financing tools for green financial markets. The green bond risk premium directly reflects the financing cost of bond issuers and the capital gains of investors. A reasonable risk premium is the key to the successful issuance and trading of green bonds. Therefore, this paper studies the factors affecting the risk premium of China&rsquo, s green bond issuance, aiming to provide a basis for determining a more reasonable risk premium. Based on the primary issuance market of green bonds, this paper takes into account the macro- and microscopic cross-sectional data of green bond issuance and comprehensively considers the main factors affecting the green bond risk premium from macro-influence factors, micro-influence factors, and green attribute factors. An empirical study of the factors affecting the risk premium of China&rsquo, s green bond issuance was conducted using multivariate statistical regression analysis. The study found that the green attribute factor affecting the risk premium of green bonds is third-party green assessment certification. The bond factors affecting the risk premium of green bond issuance mainly include debt credit rating, issue period, and issue size, all of which affect the risk of green bond issuance. The issuer factors affecting the risk premium of green bonds include debt principal, nature of property rights, and return on net assets. The macro factor affecting the risk premium of green bonds is the current market interest rate.