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The purpose of this paper is to assess the latest directives of the European Parliament and the Council – MiFID II and MiFIR – on markets in financial instruments in response to the growth of dark pools in European equity markets.

This paper examines the impact of the new regulatory packages on European equity markets by identifying areas where the legislation is effective and comparing these changes in EU legislation with US legislation on dark pools.

This paper find that the MiFID II and MiFIR directives, implemented by the European Securities and Markets Authority to address these concerns, have reduced information asymmetry between market participants, thereby increasing competition between regulated markets and alternative trading facilities.

Increased competition can improve market quality, which has practical implications for financial market regulation and policy formulation.

These findings are novel in the existing literature on high frequency trading through dark pools. They improve the understanding of dark trading and its impact on competition and market efficiency. In addition, this research can assist policymakers in designing effective financial market regulation. The economic analysis of legislation also helps regulators assess the impact of new legal provisions on the functioning of capital markets.

The purpose of this study is to comprehensively analyse and compare equity crowdfunding (ECF) regulations across 26 countries, shedding light on the diverse regulatory frameworks, investor and issuer limits and the evolution of ECF globally. By addressing this research gap and providing consolidated insights, the study aims to inform policymakers, researchers and entrepreneurs about the regulatory landscape of ECF, fostering a deeper understanding of its potential and challenges in various economies. Ultimately, the study contributes to the advancement of ECF as an alternative financing method for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and startups, empowering them to access much-needed capital for growth.

The study used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) model for a systematic literature review on global ECF regulations. Starting with 74 initial articles from Web of Sciences and Scopus databases, duplicates were removed and language criteria applied, leaving 42 articles. After a thorough full-text screening, 20 articles were excluded, resulting in the review of 22 papers from 2016 to 2022. PRISMA’s structured framework enhances the quality of systematic reviews, ensuring transparency and accessibility of findings for various stakeholders, including researchers, practitioners and policymakers, in the field of ECF regulations.

This study examines ECF regulations across various countries. Notably, the UK has advanced regulations, while the USA adopted them later through the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act. Canada regulates at the provincial level. Malaysia and China were early adopters in Asia, but Hong Kong, Japan, Israel and India have bans. Turkey introduced regulations in 2019. New Zealand and Australia enacted laws, with Australia referring to it as “crowd-sourced equity funding”. Italy, Austria, France, Germany and Belgium have established regulations in Europe. These regulations vary in investor and issuer limits, disclosure requirements and anti-corruption measures, impacting the growth of ECF markets.

This study’s findings underscore the diverse regulatory landscape governing ECF worldwide. It reveals that regulatory approaches vary from liberal to protectionist, reflecting each country’s unique economic and political context. The implications of this research highlight the need for cross-country analysis to inform practical implementation and the effectiveness of emerging ECF ecosystems. This knowledge can inspire regulatory adjustments, support startups and foster entrepreneurial growth in emerging economies, ultimately reshaping early-stage funding for new-age startups and SMEs on a global scale.

This study’s originality lies in its comprehensive analysis of ECF regulations across 26 diverse countries, shedding light on the intricate interplay between regulatory frameworks and a nation’s political-economic landscape. By delving into the nuanced variations in investor limits, investment types and regulatory strategies, it unveils the multifaceted nature of ECF regulation globally. Furthermore, this research adds value by comparing divergent perspectives on investment constraints and offering an understanding of their impact on ECF efficacy. Ultimately, the study’s unique contribution lies in its potential to inform practical implementation, shape legislative frameworks and catalyse entrepreneurial ecosystems in emerging economies, propelling the evolution of early-stage funding practices.

This paper analyzes the ex-ante determinants of asset securitization in Moroccan banks, providing a detailed exploration of factors influencing securitization in the Moroccan banking sector.

The study focuses on funding, performance, risk transfer and regulatory capital arbitrage hypotheses. By employing a probit model, we examined all Moroccan banks that securitized their assets from 2002 to 2022. Additional analyses were conducted with alternative variables and by splitting the sample into two periods, 2002–2013 and 2014–2022, to assess the impact of the regulation law 119-12 implemented in 2013 on the Moroccan securitization market.

The results indicate that the search for alternative funding sources and bank size emerge as significant factors driving securitization in Morocco. Additionally, there is limited evidence that loan portfolio quality is a decisive factor to securitize. Meanwhile, there is no evidence that securitization is driven by performance and regulatory capital arbitrage. Robustness tests further support these findings, while also suggesting that banks may engage in securitization to enhance their performance and, to a lesser extent, reduce regulatory capital.

This paper contributes to the empirical literature by identifying the determinants that drive Moroccan banks to securitize, addressing a research gap in the relatively understudied Moroccan securitization market. The findings provide valuable insights for bankers, investors and policymakers, highlighting the potential benefits of securitization and suggesting policy changes to foster a robust securitization market while ensuring financial stability.

Innovation in financing processes, enabled by the advent of new technologies, has supported the development of alternative finance funding tools. In this context, the study analyses the growing importance of alternative finance instruments (such as equity crowdfunding, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, venture capital, and others) in addressing the small and medioum enterprises' (SMEs) financing needs beyond traditional bank and market-based funding channels. By providing more flexible terms and faster approval times, these instruments are gradually reshaping the traditional bank-firm relationship.

To comprehensively understand this innovation shift in funding processes, the study employs a novel approach that merges three MCDA methods: Spherical Fuzzy Entropy, ARAS and TOPSIS. These methodologies allow for handling ambiguity and subjectivity in financial decision-making processes, examining the effects of multiple criteria, including interest rate, flexibility, accessibility, support, riskiness, and approval time, on the appeal of various financial alternatives.

The study’s results have significant theoretical and practical implications, supporting SMEs in carefully evaluate financing alternatives and enables banks to better identify the main “competitors” according to the “financial need” of the firm. Moreover, the rise of alternative finance, notably P2P lending, indicates a shift towards more efficient capital access, suggesting banks must innovate their funding channels to remain competitive, especially in offering flexible solutions for restructuring and high-risk scenarios.

The study advises top management that SMEs prefer traditional loans for their reliability and accessibility, necessitating banks to enhance transparency, innovate, and adopt digital solutions to meet evolving financing needs and improve customer satisfaction.

The study introduces a novel integration of Spherical Fuzzy TOPSIS, Entropy, and ARAS methodologies to face the complexities of financial decision-making for SME financing, addressing ambiguity and multiple criteria like interest rates, flexibility, and riskiness. It emphasizes the importance of traditional loans, the rising significance of alternative financing such as P2P lending, and the necessity for banks to innovate, thereby enriching the literature on bank-firm relationships and SME funding strategies.

This paper aims to propose a methodology for assessing an optimal portfolio of investment instruments that minimise the social costs of decarbonising economic activity while improving the environmental objectives proposed in EU legislation.

The methodology defines the net social cost of decarbonisation related to a portfolio of four instruments: installation of solar PV and wind generation, thermal insulation of households and deployment of heat pumps. The social cost is minimised by restricting it to the minimum level of the targets proposed in the Spanish National Energy and Climate Plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase generation from renewable sources and reduce energy consumption. The empirical approach also includes differences between regions according to the expected effect for instruments.

The application of this methodology to the environmental objectives defined in the current Spanish National Energy and Climate Plan for 2030 concludes that it is clearly possible to reduce the social cost of decarbonisation while improving environmental performance through a reorientation of investment instruments. In this case, such a reorientation would be based on a minimisation of efforts in thermal insulation of households and a maximisation of measures aimed at the installation of heat pumps.

The paper proposes a novel methodology for a social cost assessment that improves the allocation of a portfolio of environmental instruments. This portfolio could be extended in further work to include instruments related to transport or support for industrial decarbonisation, such as the deployment of renewable hydrogen, among others.

Since the withdrawal of IFRIC 3 in 2005, there has been a regulatory freeze in accounting for emission rights that contrasts with the international momentum of climate-related financial disclosures. This paper explores how different narratives and institutional dynamics explain the failure to produce guidance on accounting for emission rights.

This paper mobilises the notion of field-configuring events to examine a sequence of six events between 2003 and 2016, including four public consultations and two dialogues between standard setters. The paper presents a qualitative analysis of documents produced in this space that investigates how different practices and narratives configured the field's positions, agenda, and meaning systems.

Accounting for emission rights was gradually decoupled from climate change and carbon markets, relegated to the research pipeline, and forgotten. The obstacles that the IASB and EFRAG found in presenting themselves as central in the recurring events, the excess of representations, and the increasingly technical and abstract debates eroded the 2003 momentum for regulation, making the different initiatives to revitalise the project vulnerable and open to scrutiny. Lukes (2021) refers to nondecision-making to express that some issues are suffocated before they are expressed.

The regulation of accounting for emission rights, an area that has received scant attention in the literature, provides some insights into the different narrative mechanisms that, materialising in specific times and spaces, draw regulatory attention to particular accounting issues, which are problematised and, eventually, forgotten. This study also illustrates that identifying interests is problematic as actors shift from alternative positions over a long period. The case examined also raises some doubts about the previous effectiveness of international standard setters in dealing with matters of connectivity between the environment and finance, as is the case for accounting for emissions rights.

This study aims to investigate whether the changes in gender composition of bank board affects Vietnamese bank stability efficiency.

This research covers a panel of 27 commercial banks in Vietnam over a 14-year period from 2007 to 2020. The two-step system generalized method of moments is used to estimate the gender diversity–Vietnamese bank stability efficiency nexus.

The authors find that a greater degree of board gender diversification enhances bank stability efficiency and reduces bank risk-taking in Vietnam. The relationship between gender diversity and the stability efficiency of Vietnamese banks is still valid under the influence of regulatory capital sufficiency and during the financial crisis. These findings are robust to alternative proxies for risk indicators and consistent with the perspectives of stakeholder and behavior theory.

Although this research revisits the relationship between gender diversity and bank risk-taking, it is the first attempt to explore the role of women on board in enhancing the stability efficiency of banks, using the stochastic frontier approach. These findings shed light on the function of gender diversity as a governance instrument for mitigating risk in an emerging market context.

Firms in emerging economies are generally at a disadvantage in terms of resources, which may limit their digital transformation. The Chinese government has designed and promulgated a series of wind power policies from the perspectives of support and regulation. The former provides scarce resources for enterprises and thus alleviating financial constraints. While the latter increases the demands for advanced technologies, thereby triggering resource bricolages. This study aims to clarify the impact of industrial policy on the digital transformation of the Chinese wind power industry, and the role of financing constraint and resource bricolage in the above relationship.

Based on the data of listed companies in the Chinese wind power industry from 2006 to 2021, this study clarifies the impact and mechanism of industrial policy on firm digital transformation with fixed effect regression models.

Empirical results indicate that both supportive and regulatory policies are the cornerstone of the digital transformation of the Chinese wind power industry. Financial constraint and resource bricolage, respectively, mediate the impact of supportive and regulatory policies. However, the mix of supportive and regulatory policies inhibits digital transformation. Moreover, industrial policies are more effective for the digital transformation of state-owned enterprises, as well as enterprises in economically underdeveloped regions.

This study investigates the path of government intervention driving firm digital transformation from the resource-related perspective (i.e. financial constraint and resource bricolage), and its analytical framework can be extended based on other theories. The combined effects of cross-sectoral policies (e.g. wind power policy and digital infrastructure policy) can be further assessed. The marginal net benefit of government intervention can be calculated to determine whether it is worthwhile.

This study emphasizes the necessity of government intervention in the digital transformation of enterprises in emerging economies. The governments should align the policy targets, clarify policy recipients and modify policy process of different categories of industrial policies to optimize the effectiveness of policy mix. Given that the effectiveness of government intervention varies among different categories of enterprises, the competent agencies should design and promulgate differentiated industrial policies based on the heterogeneity of firms to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of industrial policies.

This is one of the earliest explorations of industrial policies’ effect on the digital transformation of the renewable energy sector in emerging economies, providing new evidence for institutional theory. Meanwhile, this study introduces financial constraint and resource bricolage into the research framework and attempts to uncover the mechanism of industrial policy driving the digital transformation of enterprises in emerging economies. Besides, to expand the understanding of the complex industrial policy system, this study assesses the effectiveness of the industrial policy mix.