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Purpose This study aims to compare the safe-haven properties of different asset markets such as gold, dollar, oil and disaggregated real estate sector (house, plot and residential) against equity returns in Pakistan over the monthly period of January 2011–December 2020. Design/methodology/approach The authors use wavelet coherence to encapsulate the overall dependence and correlation of asset classes. Further, the authors also study the potential of diversification at the tail of returns distribution by applying the wavelet value-at-risk (VaR) framework. Findings The results of wavelet coherence show that the dependence is weaker (stronger) in the short (long)-term investment horizon. Moreover, the findings of wavelet VaR reveal that the degree of co-movement between gold and equity returns greatly affects the portfolio risk followed by residential property and oil. Practical implications The findings are beneficial for the individual investor, fund managers and financial advisors looking for the optimal portfolio combination that hedges the excessive negative movements in equity returns subject to the heterogeneity in the investment horizon. Originality/value This is a primary effort to estimate safe-haven investments opportunities at a large spectrum, including disaggregated real estate sector against stock returns in Pakistan. Moreover, this study uses wavelet coherence and wavelet VaR which have an advantage over traditional analysis for diversification.

The objective of this study is to identify the impact of the shadow economy on renewable and nonrenewable energy consumption at aggregated and disaggregated levels over the period of 1972Q1-2018Q4 in Pakistan. This study carries nonlinear/asymmetric time series analysis such as quantile unit root test for stationary of data series, newly developed quantile cointegration (Xiao, J. Econom. 150:248–260, 2009) for existence of long-run relationships and novel quantile causality approach (Troster, Econom. Rev. 37, 850–866, 2018) are used to identify direction of causality over the quantiles. The results confirm that quantiles of shadow economy cointegrate with the quantiles of energy consumption at aggregated and disaggregated levels. The results of quantile regression show that a shadow economy has a positive and significant impact on renewable and nonrenewable energy consumption at aggregated and disaggregated levels in all quantiles starting from extreme low quantiles to extreme high quantiles. Furthermore, the results of quantile causality illustrate a unidirectional causality running from underground economy to fluctuations in renewable, nonrenewable, and total energy consumption. More specifically, disaggregated energy consumptions such as oil, gas, nuclear, hydro, and gas are also caused by shadow economy, generally in low and high tails/quantiles.

PurposeGovernance quality has been a dominant factor to formulate policies for the development of financial institutions in the world. Therefore, this study aims to explore the impact of governance quality on financial institutions along with globalization in the case of Pakistan.Design/methodology/approachTime series data from 1996 to 2018 are considered for analysis. The NG-Perron is applied to check the order of integration. In addition, Kim and Perron (2009) structural break unit root test is used to identify break years. The autoregressive distributive lags (ARDL) bound testing approach is used to detect the long-run association among governance quality, financial institutions and globalization.FindingsThe results of unit root analysis show that all series are stationary at a different level of integration, I(0)/I(1). However, the long-run association is detected in the presence of break years. The authors find a positive impact of governance quality to determine financial institutions in the long-short-run. Similarly, globalization also enhances financial institutions but only in long run.Originality/valueThis study fills the gap in the economic literature by exploring the linkages between the financial institution and disaggregated governance indicators in the case of Pakistan. Moreover, a role of structural break is also captured during analysis. This study also opens some new insights for policymaking.

This empirical study investigates the leverage effect in six Eastern European countries under normal and non-normaldistribution densities for the sample period from January 2020 to August 2020. We find three countries, Bulgaria, CzechRepublic and Russia which are subject to ARCH effect whereas Poland, Romania and Hungary do not exhibit ARCHeffect in daily stock returns. Further, our study finds leverage effect, where past bad news affects is asymmetrical, pastnegative returns cause more volatility in current stock returns as compared to past positive returns, in three EasternEuropean countries. Based on the AIC and BIC model selection criteria we find that the non-normal student t-distributionand GED produce reliable estimates for Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Poland, respectively. The autocorrelation functionQ1 statistic confirms the insignificance of autocorrelation in residuals of TGARCH model. The impact of stock marketdynamics on other industries, such as pharmaceutical industry, textile and clothing industry, automotive industry issignificant, especially in the conditions of COVID-19 pandemic

PurposeMomentum returns are considered an anomaly in the finance literature as their existence cannot be fully explained under the asset pricing paradigm. This study attempts to shed more light on this anomaly by investigating the determinants of momentum returns.Design/methodology/approachThe panel data technique is applied to the sample of 40 countries worldwide from 1996 to 2018. The authors use the panel-corrected standard error (PCSE) model to estimate the coefficient of World Governance Indicators (WGI), whereas the fixed effect model is used to determine the coefficient for corporate governance indicators (CGIs). The choice of PCSE estimation methods is guided by the fact that WGI variables are subjected to serial correlation, heteroskedasticity and cross-sectional dependence problems while CGI variables are not. Furthermore, a composite WGI index is constructed using principal component analysis (PCA).FindingsRegression analysis shows a negative and significant relationship between WGI index and momentum returns. The negative coefficient value of WGI supports the prediction of the overreaction hypothesis, which postulates a lower behavioral bias in the market with high governance quality. Breaking down of the WGI by their six indicators reveals that four of the indicators (control over corruption, government effectiveness, stability and avoidance of violence) are negative statistically significant with momentum returns while two indicators are not significant. As for CGIs, only one (strength of investor protection) of the four tested indicators is negative and significantly related to momentum returns.Originality/valueThe study fills the gap in economic literature by highlighting the association between governance quality at the country (WGI) and firm level (CGI) on stock momentum returns.

COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the economies around the world and the economic fallout from preventive measures such as lockdown is enormous. It has massive repercussions for the sharing economy as well. This research paper empirically analyses the impact of lockdown restrictions on five major sectors of the sharing economy such as ride-hailing, accommodation, freelance work, entertainment and delivery services. To evaluate this impact, we employed the difference-in-difference estimation technique using the Google trends data for selected countries. Daily search data of 2019 and 2020 is reindexed to examine the change in search patterns that occurred after lockdown. The empirical results show that transportation and accommodation sectors are negatively impacted by COVID-19 related lockdown while the other sectors of the sharing economy such as freelance work, streaming services and online deliveries are seeing a surge in searches. The findings of this study provide vital insights into the economic disruptions caused by COVID-19 related lockdown. We have highlighted the sectors that are booming during pandemic thus the sharing economy platforms and government have opportunities to invest in these sectors to jump-start the economy. The recently unemployed gig workers can also be employed in these sectors to address the problem of unemployment.

Purpose This research aims to inspect the existence of the “environmental Kuznets curve” (EKC) in the presence of foreign direct investment (FDI), financial development (FD) and urbanization throughout 1972–2018 for Pakistan. Design/methodology/approach For time series analysis, Phillips and Perron (PP) and Augmented Dickey–Fuller (ADF) unit root tests are used to confirm the level of integration. For robustness, Kim and Perron (2009)’s structural break unit root test is employed, which identifies the order of integration in the presence of structural break years. Further, combined cointegration analysis is performed to confirm the existence of a long-run association between underlying variables. Furthermore, autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) analysis is employed for the robustness of the cointegration approach. Findings The cointegration analysis confirms the existence of a long-run association among variables. The authors find a positive and significant impact of urbanization, FD and foreign development on environmental degradation in the long run. Similarly, only FDI increases environmental degradation in the short run. In addition, the authors find an inverted U-shape relationship between economic growth and environmental quality which, further, confirms the presence of EKC in Pakistan. Originality/value This research contributes to applied economics in many ways: the combined effect of urbanization, FD, FDI and economic growth on carbon dioxide (CO2) emission is checked simultaneously. To avoid ambiguity, this study constructs the FD index through the principal component analysis (PCA). Moreover, the role of structural breaks has been considered through the analysis. Novel Bayer-Hanck combined cointegration analysis is employed to detect the existence of long-run relationships among underlying variables.

The aim of this article is to examine the relationship between stock market performance and country level governance indicators. A good quality of governance in a country ensures effective implementation of laws which can protect the investor and improve stock market performance and vice versa. Our study utilises annual stock returns and country level governance indicators for 25 developed countries from 1996 to 2018. The fixed effect estimation suggests that stock market performance and governance indicators share a positive relationship. Our findings suggest that high quality of governance is associated with higher returns on stock. Institutional quality is a preconditioned for financial developed that set the direction of change to reduce transaction costs and agency costs and make profitable projects available to firms that subsequently leads to higher demand for equity financing. These findings have significant implications for stock market policymakers and standard asset pricing models that only include market risk factors to predict future expected stock returns.

The study aims to reaffirms the existence of short-term momentum effect in 13 developed and emerging stock markets where previous literature has lack of consensus. Although many studies emphasis on the existence of momentum effect, but still, there are substantial number of researchers that deny the its presence. The contradictory finding of many researchers over the existence of momentum effect, raises a serious question, to what extend our stock markets are informationally efficient and whether investor can make abnormal profits by using momentum investment strategies. This study applies momentum investment strategy, J6K6, to calculate momentum returns. Our study finds negative significant momentum effect in all 13 stock markets. Although momentum effect is present in 13 countries but Investors are not able to attain abnormal profit through momentum investing. These findings have an utmost importance for practitioners that they should not adopt momentum investment strategies in these countries as these strategies are generating lose. Moreover, stock market regulators should formulate these markets on the notion of efficient market hypothesis.

Viral hepatitis may be the cause of infection among children and adults presenting with hepatic disease. The Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a major risk factor for the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and more than 350 million people are chronically infected with HBV worldwide. Higher rates are found among individuals in the population identified as at-risk groups. Early discovery through screening in these groups is essential in alleviating the potential burden due to complications of chronic hepatitis B and C. the main purpose of the current study was to evaluate the prevalence of hepatitis B and hepatitis C among the garbage collecting children in Quetta city, since in this regard no previous work has been reported. It would be pertinent to mention here that the target group was Afghani children. Total 200 blood samples were collected for sake of screening HBV and HCV. Out of these samples 32 (16%) were found positive for HBsAG while 38 (19%) children were positive for HCV. One of the main reasons that came forward during the study was that children were the inhabitants of slums with poor hygienic conditions and their profession was to collect garbage from various areas of Quetta city. Upon further investigation it came forward that they were previously vaccinated for hepatitis. This study has been done with the objective to bring the positive cases of hepatitis and to increase awareness about hepatitis in order to decrease the rate of prevelance of HBV and HCV among garbage collecting children at Quetta city. Key words: HBV, HCV, prevalence, Quetta city.