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This study aims to explore the nexus between insurance penetration and economic development in Vietnam, one of the fastest-growing economies over the past two decades.

This study uses an updated data set of the insurance sector in Vietnam from 1996 to 2020. The autoregressive lagging distribution and cointegrating non-linear autoregressive lagging distribution (NARDL) models are used to explore the nexus between the insurance market development and economic growth.

This study confirms the unidirectional causality and positive impacts of insurance market development on economic growth both in the short and long term, supporting the “supply-leading” hypothesis. Nonlife insurance has more significant but slower impacts on contributing to economic development in the long run. From the NARDL approach, this study also discloses the asymmetric relationship between the insurance industry and economic growth. Aggregate and life insurance display short- and long-term asymmetric impacts, whereas nonlife insurance shows long-term asymmetry.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the hidden asymmetries of the insurance-growth nexus in Vietnam from non-linear models. Notwithstanding the theoretical contributions to the prior literature, several practical implications are proposed for insurance businesses, policymakers and investors.

This study explores the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis on herding behaviour in the Australian equity market by considering liquidity, government interventions and sentiment contagion.

This study utilizes a daily dataset of the top 500 stocks in the Australian market from January 2009 to December 2021. Both predictive regression and portfolio approaches are employed to consider the impact of COVID-19 on herding intention.

This study confirms that herding propensity is more pronounced at the beginning of the crisis and becomes less significant towards later phases when reverse herding is more visible. Investors herd more toward sectors with less available information on financial support from the government during the financial meltdown. Conditioning the stock liquidity, herding is only detectable during highly liquid periods and high-liquid stocks, which is more observable during the initial phases of the crisis. Further, the mood contagion from the United States (US) market to Australian market and asymmetric herding intention are evident during the pandemic.

This is the first study to shed further light on the impact of a health crisis on the trading behaviour of Australian investors, which is driven by liquidity, public information and sentiment. Notwithstanding the theoretical contributions to the prior literature, several practical implications are proposed for businesses, policymakers and investors during uncertainty periods.

Recognition that not every climate adaptation policy is a good one has shifted attention to new tools and methods to measure the adequacy and effectiveness of adaptation policies. This study aims to propose and apply and applies an innovative adaptation policy assessment framework to identify the extent to which climate adaptation policies in Vietnam exhibit conditions that are likely to ensure a sufficient, credible and effective adaptation.

In total, 21 conditions, categorized under five normative principles and covering critical issue areas in adaptation domain, form the climate adaptation policy assessment framework. The principles were double-checked and tested in case studies through observations and analyses of policy documents to ensure that each condition should be distinct and not overlapping across principles. To see if the principles and attendant conditions were able to capture all relevant aspects of adaptation, the authors used structured expert judgment. In total, 39 policy documents pertaining to climate change adaptation were selected for qualitative document analysis. In-depth interviews with local officials and experts were conducted to address data gaps.

The study reveals major weaknesses constituting a reasonably worrisome picture of the adaptation policies in Vietnam since several critical conditions were underrepresented. These results shed new light on why some adaptation policies falter or are posing adverse impacts. The findings suggest that a sound policy assessment framework can provide evidence on what effective adaptation policy looks like and how it can be enabled. The framework for climate adaptation policy assessment in this study can be easily adjusted and used for different socio-environmental contexts in which new conditions for policy assessment might emerge.

The findings show underlying weaknesses constituting a reasonably worrisome picture of the adaptation regime in Vietnam. In the absence of mechanisms and measures for accountability and transparency in policy processes, adaptation in Vietnam appears more likely to be prone to maladaptation and corruption. While solving these problems will not be easy for Vietnam, the government needs to evaluate whether the short-term gains in sustaining the existing adaptation policies really make progress and serve its long-term climate-adaptive development goals.

Although interpretations of adaptation effectiveness may be very divergent in different normative views on adaptation outcomes, the authors argue that a common, agreed-upon effectiveness can be reached if it is clearly defined and measurable in adaptation policies. Thus, the climate adaptation policy assessment framework proposed in this study is critical for policymakers, practitioners, donors and stakeholders dealing with adaptation to better understand the weaknesses in policymaking processes, pinpoint priority areas of action and timely prevent or prepare for possible adverse impacts of policies.