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This study forecasts the government expenditure components in Nigeria, including recurrent and capital expenditures for 2021 and 2022, based on data from 1981 to 2020.

The study employs statistical/econometric problems using the Feasible Quasi Generalized Least Squares approach. Expenditure forecasts involve three simulation scenarios: (1) do nothing where the economy follows its natural path; (2) an optimistic scenario, where the economy grows by specific percentages and (3) a pessimistic scenario that defines specific economic contractions.

The estimation model is informed by Wagner's law specifying a positive link between economic activities and public spending. Model estimation affirms the expected positive relationship and is relevant for generating forecasts. The out-of-sample results show that a higher proportion of the total government expenditure (7.6% in 2021 and 15.6% in 2022) is required to achieve a predefined growth target (5%).

This study offers empirical evidence that specifically requires Nigeria to invest a ratio of 3 to 1 or more in capital expenditure to recurrent expenditure for the economy to be guided on growth.

The fiscal outlay efficiency matters when the performance-based allocation of funds is made to state governments by the central government in a federal structure of an economy like India. Also the efficiency cannon of public expenditure is a key aspect in the field of public economics. Thus, a study to evaluate the efficiency in fiscal outlay of Indian states has been conducted.

The paper offers a three divisions–based paradigm under Network Data Envelopment Analysis framework to compare the performance of fiscal entities (say Indian state governments) in converting available fiscal resources into desired short-run and long-run growth and development objectives. The network efficiency score has been taken as a measure of the quality of fiscal outlay management that is trifurcated into divisional efficiencies representing budgeting process, fiscal outlay efficiency process and fiscal outlay effectiveness process.

It has been noticed that the states are under performing in achieving short-run growth targets and so the efficiency process division has been identified a major source of fiscal under performance. Suboptimum allocation of fiscal expenditure under various heads within the fiscal resources, as explained under budgeting process, is another major cause of fiscal under performance.

The study purposes a three divisions–based paradigm that takes into account efficiency of a state in (1) planning budget, (2) achieving short-run growth targets and (3) achieving long-run development targets. These three stages are named as budgeting process efficiency, fiscal outlay efficiency and fiscal outlay effectiveness, respectively. Therefore, a new paradigm called BEE paradigm is proposed to evaluate performance of fiscal entities in terms of fiscal outlay efficiency.

In existing literature on measuring efficiency of public expenditure, the public sector outputs have been made as function of fiscal expenditure as input treating the said outlay as an exogenous variable. In present context, the fiscal expenditure has been treated endogenous to the budgeting process. A high inefficiency on account of budgeting process supports this treatment too.

It is documented that companies and government agencies in the USA invest more in the fourth fiscal quarter without having higher investment opportunities. While previous studies focus on the agency conflicts and information asymmetry within organizations, this study is motivated by Scharfstein and Stein's (2000) two-tiered agency model and aims to examine how firms' external business environment affects the “fourth quarter effect.”

The authors implement this study in a sample of 41 countries and observe similar seasonality in firm investment as documented in the US market.

More importantly, using country characteristics, this study finds that firms from countries with better investor rights and protection, and more developed financial markets show less severe over-investment in the fourth fiscal quarter.

This paper contributes to the literature of law and finance, and the internal capital market, by investigating the quarterly investment patterns of firms from 41 countries. The authors find that similar to the results in earlier studies on the US market, firms in the global market increase their capital expenditure in the fourth fiscal quarter, indicating that the internal agency conflicts between the headquarters and divisional managers are widespread across the world. The authors also find that firms that operate in countries with higher investor rights and protection, and more developed financial markets, tend to show less severe “fourth quarter effect”.

This study aims to investigate the effect of intangible capital (e.g. intangible investments and research and development (R&D) expenditures) on future profitability in an emerging economy and the moderating role of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) for companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange.

To this aim, information about 210 companies during 2014–2021 was collected. This study calculated EPU based on the inflation rate, interest rate, exchange rate and economic growth.

The results showed that both R&D expenditures and other intangible investments positively affect future profitability. Moreover, EPU decreases the positive effect of R&D expenditures and other intangible investments on future profitability. Hypothesis testing based on ordinary least squares and generalized method of moments regressions confirmed these results. This study emphasizes the urgent need to adjust how they operate the business during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The nature and degree of intangible assets and R&D expenditures in firms in emerging markets is an interesting area of research. However, empirical studies in this area have not led to any unanimous conclusion in emerging markets. Moreover, intangible assets and R&D expenditures become very important in the economy affected by the financial crisis and conditions of uncertainties. In light of the COVID-19 crisis, significant changes occurred at all levels and affected accounting-related issues, and the present study highlighted COVID-19. The findings of this research will not only help the managers of companies in developing countries but also, because of the dearth of similar research, they can help managers in developed countries and the global community.

This study aims to provide an empirical investigation into rising capital flight and the role of institutional quality to mitigate its effect on the real sector in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

The study uses the system generalized method of moments and uses data spanning from 1989 to 2020 from 26 SSA countries.

The findings show that capital flight has no direct impact on the real sector while institutional quality adversely impacted the agricultural and industrial sectors. The study also found that institutional quality is unable to mitigate the effect of capital flight on the industrial sector.

This study investigates if institutional quality mitigates the impact of capital flight on the real sector proxied by industrial value-added and agriculture value-added.

The role institutional quality plays in the rising pace of globalization and its associated health effects remain unclear in the literature. This study, therefore, empirically examined the moderating role of institutional quality on the globalization-health outcomes nexus in Nigeria, a country with a relatively weak health system.

The study employed Dynamic Ordinary Least Square (DOLS) to estimate the empirical models. The Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) and Canonical Cointegration Regression (CCR) techniques were thereafter used to check the consistency and robustness of our results. Annual time-series data spanning from 1984 to 2020 were sourced from the World Development Indicator, KOF Globalization Index, International Countries Risk Guide (ICRG) and Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin databases.

The results revealed that overall globalization and its three dimensional components (economic, political and social globalization) adversely affect life expectancy in their separate models, but increased life expectancy significantly after their interaction with government effectiveness. Also, real GDP, health aids, government recurrent health expenditure are other determinants of life expectancy in Nigeria.

The Nigerian government should put in place appropriate mechanisms directed toward building and sustaining government effectiveness. This will help mitigate the negative effects of globalization and utilize its net positive benefits to improve life expectancy in Nigeria.

The research is the first to comprehensively examine the moderating impact of institutional quality on the nexus between overall globalization as well as its three dimensional components (economic, political and social) on health outcomes in Nigeria.

This study investigates the relationship between working capital investment (WCI) and firm value for Indian manufacturing firms using excess net working capital (NWC) and Tobin's Q as a measure of WCI and firm value, respectively. The study also examines whether firms use the cash released from excess investment in working capital to make long-term investments.

The sample comprises 834 Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) listed Indian manufacturing firms whose data from April 2010 to March 2020 are analyzed using a fixed-effect panel regression analysis approach.

The empirical results show that excess NWC influences firm value negatively and significantly. However, the nature of the relationship becomes nonlinear upon dividing the sample into positive excess NWC and negative excess NWC. The findings from the study also reveal that firms redistribute cash freed from positive excess NWC for long-term investments to improve their value without impacting the corresponding risk.

Overall, the results suggest that firms with positive excess NWC can enhance their valuations by building adequate long-term investments from surplus WCI funds.

To the authors’ best knowledge, studies on this issue have primarily focused on developed economies. No study seems to have been done on this subject in the emerging South Asian economies. The present study is the first to bridge the research gap by investigating the relationship between excess WCI and firm value for manufacturing firms in India. Moreover, it examines whether a positive excess NWC reduction translates into corporate investments (CI).

This paper aims to identify the impact of the new ambient air quality standards (AAQS) on firm innovation.

Taking listed companies from 2009 to 2014 as the research object, the authors focus on the quasinatural experiment of the pilot policy of the new AAQS and apply the time-varying difference-in-differences (DID) method to conduct the empirical test.

The authors find that the new AAQS has a negative effect on firm innovation, and this negative impact may be caused by the increased environmental expenditures following the implementation of the new AAQS. Furthermore, the authors find that firm profitability and state ownership weaken this negative effect, but the effect of the degree of industrial pollution is statistically insignificant.

The study is an initial effort to explore the causal effect of the new AAQS on firm innovation. This study enriches the literature on the impact of environmental regulations on firm innovation and provides some reference value for the formulation of environmental regulation policies in developing countries.

This study aims to explore the determinants of public debt in selected South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries for 19 years, from 2001 to 2019.

Using ordinary fixed and random effect models, the authors examine the role of internal and external factors in determining the composition of public debt. Furthermore, for robustness, they compare the results with two-stage least square (2SLS) regression estimates after considering the problem of endogeneity, overidentification, under-identification and weak instruments.

The findings show that among the selected macroeconomic variables, inflation, exchange rate and broad money have significant negative effects on the debt-GDP ratio. In contrast, military spending, corruption and interest rates appear to positively influence the same as per 2SLS results. From the policymaking perspective, SAARC countries should focus more on reducing military spending and make a concerted effort to augment investments in productive projects. Further, with strong fiscal consolidation and institutional quality, it is important to mitigate the frequent occurrence of corruption conundrums in emerging economies for the development of a transparent economic system.

The study is distinct from previous studies in two ways. First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are no studies focusing on SAARC countries in the context of public debt. Second, the study expands the existing literature on public debt by taking into account both external and internal debts to decipher the within-country and cross-country determinants of debt accumulation. More specifically, this model considers accountability and transparency in the public sector, cross-border security challenges and benefits of globalization by including explanatory variables such as corruption, military expenditure spending and capital inflows.

This paper aims to study the efficacy of the business model (BM) diagram in the companies’ integrated reports. Diagrams and graphics are an effective way of communicating the complex processes of a business. However, these diagrams should have complete and appropriate content in a gist for easy understanding.

A study of BM diagrams published in the integrated reports of 65 Indian listed companies was carried out. The contents of these diagrams were compared to the requirement of BM as per the international <IR> framework.

While companies presented the BM diagram, there seemed to be a lack of clarity in the definitions of input, output and outcome capitals. Measurable metrics that give a clear understanding regarding the use and generation of resources were missing. The diagram was presented with some information because it had to be, but the purpose of the BM, which is the core of <IR>, was not conveyed. Also, the diagram did not display value creation or erosion effectively.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the first studies on the BM diagram in the <IR> space. It emphasises that the diagram can capture the value-creation aspect of the <IR>. Thus, the BM diagram can be used as an effective and concise communication tool for the users of this report.