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This study compares the motives of holding cash between developed (Australian) and developing (Malaysian) financial markets.

For the period 2006–2020, the t-test, fixed-effect and generalised method of moment (GMM) model have been applied to a sample of 1878 (1,165 Australian and 713 Malaysian) firms.

The empirical results reveal that firms in developed financial markets hold higher cash compared to the developing financial markets. The findings confirm that motives to hold cash differ between developed and developing financial markets. The GMM findings further show that cash holdings (CH) in Australia are higher due to higher ratios of cash flow, research and development (R&D) and return on assets (ROA), and lower due to larger dividend payments. In the Malaysian market, however, cash flows and R&D are ineffectual, ROA falls and dividend payments rise CH.

The study helps managers, practitioners and investors understand that firms' distinct economic, institutional, accounting and financial environments are important. To attain the desired outcomes, they must thus comprehend and consider these considerations while developing suitable liquidity strategies.

To the authors' best knowledge, this is the initial research demonstrating how varied cash motives and their ramifications are in developed and developing financial markets. Therefore, this study identifies the importance that CH motives varied among financial markets and that findings from a particular market cannot be generalised to other markets because of the market and financial structural variations.

We study the potential effects of pension underfunding on corporate investment, financial constraints and improved employee bonding using 10 Pacific-Basin countries (including the United States, Australia, and eight Asian countries) at heterogeneous economic development stages and different regulatory environments. We document that corporate pensions are significantly underfunded in most countries of our sample in the period of 2001–2017, when interest rates were ultralow in most countries. In addition, firms from countries with stronger employee protection and more generous retirement benefits tend to show higher levels of underfunding in their defined benefit (DB) pension plans. To the extent of pension underfunding imposing constraints on corporate investment, we find that firms in these countries can face more constraints on investment when their pension is underfunded.

The purpose of this study is to explore the possible impact of banking market structure on the idiosyncratic risk of financially dependent firms in China.

The study analyzes firm-level data for China from 1999 to 2018 using a two-step dynamic panel system generalized method of moments (GMM).

The findings imply that bank competition lowers corporate risk, particularly among firms that are highly dependent on external funding for their financing needs. The findings are consistent with alternative indicators of competition, corporate risk, and financial dependence. The analysis of the transmission mechanism – the channel through which competition affects corporate risk – reveals that bank competition reduces corporate risk by curtailing financing constraints faced by firms.

The competition-enhancing policy should consider the optimum level of bank competition for financial and economic stability. Further research is necessary to define the “desirable” or “optimum” level of bank competition.

In China, where the banking sector is still highly concentrated, the findings of this study call for policies aimed at encouraging healthy competition among banks. Nevertheless, such a policy must also consider the extent of bank competition that is optimal for the economy, particularly for financial and economic stability.

The paper provides the first evidence of the possible linkage between bank competition and corporate risk in China.

This article analyzes the moderating role of investment opportunities, business risk and agency costs in shaping the nexus between excess cash and corporate performance.

This research uses dynamic regression models (two-step system generalized method of moments) to analyze the data related to 200 Turkish companies listed on Borsa Istanbul (BIST) for the years between 2009 and 2020.

The findings indicate that when excess cash increases, the financial performance deteriorates only for firms with lower investments compared to firms with more investments. In addition, investment contributes to better financial performance for firms that hold cash surplus, whereas the influence of investment is insignificant for firms that have insufficient cash. Agency costs of equity exacerbate the adverse impact of excess cash on financial performance while agency costs of debt mitigate this effect. Excess cash reduces the financial performance of highly leveraged firms. However, this impact becomes insignificant when debt ratio decreases. The findings also show that investment has more significant role than business risk in building the precautionary motive to hold cash.

The findings of this article are limited to the Turkish market. Future research is still needed in other emerging markets to compare the results and reveal more about the effect of excess cash on firm performance, and how other factors can change this effect.

The findings verify the increased significance of excess cash in the presence of investment opportunities and difficulties in accessing external funds. Nevertheless, the role of the equity related agency problem in reducing the benefits of cash surplus confirms the necessity of policies that support corporate governance, especially in emerging markets.

This article, according to the knowledge of author, is the first to examine the role of agency costs associated with debt and equity, and the compound effect of investment opportunities and business risk on the nexus between excess internal funds and corporate financial performance in emerging markets.

Estimation of (in)efficiency became a popular practice that witnessed applications in virtually any sector of the economy over the last few decades. Many different models were deployed for such endeavors, with Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) models dominating the econometric literature. Among the most popular variants of SFA are Aigner, Lovell, and Schmidt (1977), which launched the literature, and Kumbhakar, Ghosh, and McGuckin (1991), which pioneered the branch taking account of the (in)efficiency term via the so-called environmental variables or determinants of inefficiency. Focusing on these two prominent approaches in SFA, the goal of this chapter is to try to understand the production inefficiency of public hospitals in Queensland. While doing so, a recognized yet often overlooked phenomenon emerges where possible dramatic differences (and consequently very different policy implications) can be derived from different models, even within one paradigm of SFA models. This emphasizes the importance of exploring many alternative models, and scrutinizing their assumptions, before drawing policy implications, especially when such implications may substantially affect people’s lives, as is the case in the hospital sector.

Exploiting novel measures of climate change exposure and corporate culture generated by a powerful textual analysis of earnings conference calls, this study aims to explore the effect of firm-specific climate change exposure on corporate innovation through the lens of corporate culture.

The authors apply the standard regression analysis as well as a variety of sophisticated techniques, namely, propensity score matching, entropy balancing and an instrumental-variable analysis with multiple alternative instruments.

The authors find that more exposure to climate change risk results in more innovation, as indicated by a significantly stronger culture of innovation. The findings are consistent with the notion that firms more exposed to climate change risk are pressed to be more innovative to adapt to the numerous changes caused by climate change. Finally, the authors also find that the effect of firm-level exposure on innovation is considerably less pronounced during uncertain times.

The authors are among the first studies to take advantage of a novel measure of firm-specific exposure to climate change and investigate how climate change exposure influences an innovative culture. Since climate change is a timely issue, the findings offer important implication to several stakeholders, such as shareholders, executives and investors in general.

The purpose of this study is to investigate (1) how managers respond to stock price crashes, (2) why they respond and (3) how their responses affect shareholders.

This study employs a panel regression with various firm-level controls and firm- and year-fixed effects. The sample is comprised of 101,532 firm-year observations with 11,727 unique firms from 1950 to 2019. Using mutual fund flow redemption pressure as an exogenous variable to stock price crashes, the paper provides further evidence of the causality of documented findings.

Management becomes more focused on improving transparency, raising investment efficiency, reducing agency conflicts and regaining the trust of shareholders by investing in social capital and employee welfare. These actions increase firm value. This study also suggests that management undertakes these actions out of concern for their tenure of employment.

The catalysts of stock price crashes are well documented, but much less is known about what happens following stock price crashes. This study provides more insights into the understanding of corporate crisis management practices following adverse events.

This paper aims to explore the value of geographic diversification in the context of deglobalization, drawing evidence from a quasi-natural experiment – the Brexit referendum that took place on 23 June 2016 in the UK.

This study applies an event study methodology to estimate the impact of the Brexit vote on a cross-section of firms with varying levels of geographic diversification – undiversified UK firms, UK firms with significant operations in the European Union (EU) and globally diversified UK firms. This study deploys a Heckman two-stage regression approach to address sample selection bias.

This study finds that undiversified UK firms experienced negative cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) around the Brexit referendum. The value of UK firms with majority sales within the UK declined by 0.9 percentage points, on average, in the three days centred on the Brexit referendum. In contrast, UK firms that are globally diversified, with the majority of sales within the EU are unaffected, while diversified firms in the rest of the world generated positive CARs of 1.8 percentage points over the same period. These results are robust to firm characteristics, selection bias and alternative measures of CARs and diversification.

This study is subject to some limitations that open avenues for future work. There are a few available proxies of diversification and further work on developing other proxies is much needed. Further work may also examine the long-term impact of diversification on UK firms. This study considered Brexit as a quasi-natural experiment, and this study could be applied to other deglobalization events like COVID-19 and can enhance the generalizability of diversification strategy in the deglobalized world. Findings may stimulate future work to explore how another form of diversification – product diversification has affected firm returns around Brexit. Finally, this study has focused on the UK as its base case. It may be interesting to corroborate the findings by exploring the impact of Brexit on European firms, who hitherto Brexit, had some operations in the UK.

This work offers some insights for policymakers and regulators around the impact of deglobalization on local firms. Findings suggest that these trends significantly negatively impact the most vulnerable firms (smaller firms with less global reach), while their larger counterparts with significant global reach might be insulated. This finding is important for determining the nature of support needed by different firms in times of deglobalization. The work also offers insights to managers of firms operating in countries where there are real prospects of deglobalization. Specifically, the work highlights the importance of geographic diversification when free movement of goods, services and people is restricted.

This study shows that a certain group of globally diversified firms earned significantly higher returns from the prospect of the UK leaving the EU, thereby highlighting the value of geographic diversification in a time of deglobalization.

Ores and minerals are extracted from the earth’s crust depending on the type of deposit. Iron ore mines come under massive deposit patterns and have their own mine development and life cycles. This study aims to depict the development and life cycle of large open-pit iron ore mines and the intertwined organizational design of the departments/sections operated within the industry.

Primary data were collected on the site by participant observation, in-depth interviews of the field staff and executives, and field notes. Secondary data were collected from the literature review to compare and cite similar or previous studies on each mining activity. Finally, interactions were conducted with academic experts and top field executives to validate the findings. An organizational ethnography methodology was employed to study and analyse four large-scale iron ore mines of India’s largest iron-producing state, Odisha, from January to April 2023.

Six stages were observed for development and life cycle, and the operations have been depicted in a schematic diagram for ease of understanding. The intertwined functioning of organizational set-up is also discovered.

The paper will benefit entrepreneurs, mining and geology students, new recruits, and professionals in allied services linked to large iron ore mines. It offers valuable insights for knowledge enhancement, operational manual preparation and further research endeavours.

Emerging economies have been highlighted as an important growth source of the global economy. However, this group of countries has not received enough academic attention yet. Therefore, this study aims to identify the impact of research and development (R&D) expenditure on economic growth in emerging economies.

The theoretical framework of the production function is applied to quantitatively analyse the impact of R&D expenditure on economic growth with a sample of 29 emerging economies in the period between 1996 and 2019.

The panel cointegration test confirms the existence of long-run cointegration relationships between economic growth and independent variables in these emerging economies. Besides, the estimated results show that the national R&D expenditure has positive effects on economic growth from both direct and interaction dimensions. This evidence has filled the empirical research gap in the R&D-growth nexus in the case of emerging economies. Finally, while gross capital and education have positive impacts on growth, corruption has a harmful effect on economic growth in these countries.

The results highlight that policymakers should enhance R&D expenditure and R&D activities as the key national development strategy. The investment in R&D not only helps emerging economies avoid the middle-income trap but also pushes these countries to successfully join the group of developed countries.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is among the first to examine the impact of R&D expenditure on economic growth with a homogeneous sample of emerging economies. The results are obviously helpful for policymakers to use R&D as the key development strategy for supporting economic growth in emerging economies in the future.