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Corporate cash holdings have received increased attention from researchers and practitioners as cash management is a crucial task for executives. Holding too much cash can result in low returns and mismanagement by managers. Conversely, holding low cash reserves can lead to missed investment opportunities. The present study examines the relationship between board governance, financial constraints, and corporate cash holdings. The robust fixed-effects method is used in this study to analyze 860 A-listed firms in China from 2005 to 2020. An index is designed to measure board effectiveness, while financial constraints are measured using Z-score, the Kaplan and Zingales index, and the SA index. The major findings document that the financially less constrained firms hold more cash when there is an effective board governance. Furthermore, financially less constrained firms have more robust board governance to minimize the agency concerns of managers and shareholders. This research provides an inference for stockholders' activism connected to the cash holdings of the financially constrained and less constrained companies. The findings offer useful policy implications for stakeholders to reform contemporary cash holding policies. Specifically, understanding the role of an effective governance system for financially less constrained firms would help minimize the potential agency conflict. JEL Classification: G34, O16, G32, F34 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, sustainable economic growth has taken the front line of the global development agenda. The common dependency on fossil fuel energy, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the continuous rising demands for energy have posed challenges that put the world in a climate change trap. This work empirically analyzes the effect of innovation, oil price, oil price volatility and economic growth on GHG emissions over the period of 1991–2015. The study compares the emission level between European Union countries (EU) (26), oil-producing countries (22), China and the United States of America (USA) using the Driscoll–Kraay model. The main empirical finding points to a positive effect of innovation on GHG emission reduction initiatives in oil-importing economies. Particularly, EU countries significantly minimized emissions due to innovation, followed by China and the USA. Contrarily, the effect of innovation increases GHG emission in oil-exporting economies. The results also indicate broader significant effects of oil price and oil price volatility on GHG emission. Interestingly, the effect of oil price on GHG emission is asymmetrical between oil-exporting and -importing economies. Oil price increases in oil-importing countries decrease GHG emission; contrarily, its effect increases emissions in oil-exporting countries. Thus, oil-exporting countries lack motivation to decrease emission levels due to oil price escalation. Unlike the oil price, oil price volatility comparably decreases GHG emissions in oil-exporting and -importing economies. Thus, one might be tempted to take oil price volatility and the future uncertainty of oil price as a virtuous instance rather than oil price increment. Thus, policymakers need to pay attention to market forces and policy measures to monitor GHG emissions due to economic activities. The results are also robust under the alternative econometrics estimation model of generalized method of moments (GMM)-Differenced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]