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This chapter discusses the major steps and issues related to the inclusion of public services in inequality research. Empirically, it investigates how the income distribution in countries changes when the value of publicly provided services to households is included. The authors consider five major categories of public services: education, health care, social housing, childcare and elderly care. On average across OECD countries, spending on these ‘in-kind’ benefits accounts for about 13% of GDP, slightly more than the spending on cash transfers – but with considerable cross-country variation. Broadening the income concept to account for in-kind benefits considerably increases households’ economic resources. But public services also contribute to reducing income inequality, by between one-fifth and one-third depending on the inequality measure. This chapter suggests that publicly provided services fulfil an important direct redistributive role in OECD countries.

Following the United Kingdom's (UK) withdrawal from the European Union (EU), there is uncertainty in the financial services industry on equivalence of regulatory regimes. This also affects the insurance industry. As of now, it is not clear if the UK’s supervisory regime (“Solvency UK”) will be classified as equivalent to the European Solvency II supervisory regime. After no equivalence decision was taken during the Brexit transition period and there are efforts by the UK in the form of the UK Solvency II Review and the Financial Services and Markets Bill to adapt Solvency II more to the characteristics of the national insurance market, the uncertainties are intensified. Although Solvency II non-equivalence would have a significant impact on insurance groups operating in both the UK and the EU, there has been no detailed analysis of whether these initiatives could have an impact on a future Solvency II equivalence decision. The purpose of this paper is to address and close this research gap with a literature review and a subsequent equivalence mapping and discussion.

Based on the literature review methodology, this paper draws on academic sources as well as publications from governments and regulators, articles from consultancies and subject matter experts and uses this literature to provide an overview of the current state of research on equivalence in the wider financial services industry, but specifically on Solvency II equivalence, the UK Solvency II Review and the Financial Services and Markets Bill. Based on this literature review, the paper also forms the basis for an innovative and forward-looking Solvency II equivalence mapping and discussion.

Several articles state that differences between Solvency II and Solvency UK could harm a future Solvency II equivalence decision. The UK Solvency II Review and the Financial Services and Markets Bill are two initiatives that support the objective of aligning the Solvency II supervisory regime more closely with the circumstances of the UK insurance market. Although both initiatives contribute to the fact that Solvency UK differs in parts from Solvency II, based on the literature review and the subsequent equivalence mapping and discussion, there are currently no reforms that should harm future Solvency II equivalence decisions.

This paper provides a previously non-existent overview of equivalence in the wider financial services industry, but specifically on Solvency II equivalence, the UK Solvency II Review and the Financial Services and Markets Bill, and brings them together in an innovative equivalence discussion. It thus presents the current state of knowledge on Solvency II after Brexit and develops it further around a mapping against the equivalence criteria. As non-equivalence could have significant implications for insurance groups operating in both the UK and the EU, this paper is a useful and practical study that provides a previously non-existent equivalence mapping and discussion based on current initiatives and publications. It thus closes the research gap identified and reduces uncertainties in the insurance industry and can be used as a blueprint for detailed and forward-looking equivalence mappings and discussions for the wider financial services industry.

The question that inevitably surfaces in practice, and certainly in lecture halls, is which equity valuation method is superior. Popular opinion holds that academia and investment practitioners may have different preferences in this regard. This article investigates which primary minority and majority equity valuation methods are advocated by academia, and how well these preferences are aligned with the equity valuation methods that investment practitioners apply in practice. The research results reveal that, contrary to popular belief, academia and practice are fairly well aligned in terms of preferred equity valuation methods, with notable differences in their respective approaches.

The major purpose of this paper is to refocus the appraisal profession on estimating value rather than explaining price. The appraisal profession itself encompasses many disciplines of valuation beyond real estate, and transcends disciplines such as economics, the construction trades, business, finance, law, government, statistics, mathematics, geography, geology, mapping, and information sciences.

This paper describes how rapidly changing capital market conditions greatly affected transaction prices for real estate when underlying economic fundamental values of these properties remained unchanged. As such, differences between transaction prices and underlying economic value can be determined when capital markets rapidly expand or contract.

Most of the concepts, methods, processes, and techniques that appraisers use today are the direct result of studies performed within the academic community and most often from some other related field of study, rather than from pure valuation research itself. This is where the problems with which one is living today have erupted.

Property values and transaction prices are two very different beasts: value is a concept, whereas price is a reality. Appraisers have somehow forgotten that the price paid for real estate can be quite different from the value of that same parcel of real estate.

In the recent wake of environmental sustainability, more attention has been paid to the consumption of specific energy types. However, how the consumption of such energy alternatives influences multiple corporate-level decisions has not yet been well explored in the literature. The current analysis bridges this deficiency in literature by exploring the empirical relationship between energy alternatives and cash holdings.

For empirical analysis, the authors sample the non-financial sector enterprises founded in five BRICS economies and employ the system GMM and fully modified ordinary least square techniques to establish the regression. The selection of econometric techniques is subject to the existence of endogeneity and cointegration.

The estimated coefficients reveal a significant negative effect of renewable energy (REC) while a significant positive impact of non-renewable energy consumption (FFE) on cash holdings. Referring to low pollution emissions, less operational risk and a cheap source of energy, the more consumption of renewable energy reduces the motives of cash holdings. Primarily, the current analysis advocates an important policy regarding the utilization of renewable energy as industrial fuel inputs because it has a material impact on cash holdings and also ensures environmental sustainability.

This study has equal policy outputs for industry officials, policy regulators and environmental economists. Corporate managers should do more focus on transforming the energy needs from non-renewable to renewable as such transformation can benefit in terms of both, i.e. environmental sustainability and low cash holdings.

Contemporary literature mainly highlights the determinants of energy consumption. However, it is less known how the consumption of specific energy sources affects the firm's cash-holding decisions. Thus, this study enriches both energy economics and financial economics literature by offering cutting-edge evidence on the sustainable role of REC in declining cash holdings.

This study aims to examine the impact of executive bonus compensation on a firm’s financial leverage policy and the extent to which this compensation–leverage relation is moderated by firm growth and executive ownership.

Using data from 213 non-financial and non-utility UK FTSE 350 firms for the period 2007–2015, generating a total of 1,784 firm-year observations, panel econometric methods are used to test the model.

Drawing insights from agency theoretic view, this paper uncovers that managerial cash bonus compensation is negatively and significantly related to financial leverage. However, stock bonus compensation has a positive and significant impact on leverage. This study also observes that compensation–leverage is moderated by both firm growth and executive ownership. The results remain robust to alternative econometric models.

While this paper builds on the risk-motivated argument of executive bonus compensation literature, it is the first – to the best of the knowledge – to explore the bonus compensation-corporate financial leverage and, particularly, examine the extent to which firm growth and corporate executive ownership matter in this relationship.

The present study aims to explore the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the likelihood of financial distress for a sample of 139 Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) listed firms throughout 2008–2019.

Panel logistic regression (PLR) and the dynamic generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator are used to examine the impact of CSR on financial distress. The investment in CSR measures through a multidimensional financial approach which comprises the sum of the contribution made by the company in the form of charitable donation, employees’ welfare and research and development, whereas the Altman Z-score and ZM-Score are used as an indicator of financial distress. The higher the Z-score lower will be the probability of financial distress, whereas the higher ZM score shows a greater probability of financial distress risk.

The authors find a significant negative impact of CSR on financial distress in both PLR and GMM models. This finding is consistent with the stakeholder view of CSR, as an investment in CSR not only aligns the interest between shareholders and stakeholders but also mitigates the risk of financial distress as well.

Like other studies, the present study is not free from limitations. First, financial firms skipped from the sample, although literature witnesses a lot of studies highlight the financial firms' commitment to achieving CSR goals. Second, financial distress occurs in different stages, the authors fail to establish linkage CSR engagements at different stages of CSR. In the future, researchers can make a valuable addition by covering these missing links in present studies.

The findings of this study provide more insight to corporate managers and investors about the association between the quality of investment in CSR and the degree of financial distress, concerning Pakistani firms. Furthermore, this study contributes to the existing literature by adding new evidence from developing countries such as Pakistan which are helpful for regulatory bodies and policymakers in the formulation of long-term CSR strategies to manage financial distress.

The study extends the body of existing literature on CSR and the likelihood of financial distress in Pakistan. The results suggest that policymakers may pay special attention to the quality of CSR while predicting corporate financial distress.

The purpose of this paper is to test the relationship between stock dividends policy and liquidity of ex ante announcement to improve the traditional stock dividends liquidity hypothesis.

The authors examine a sample of 2,088 which matching stocks between having stock dividends policy and having no dividends policy during 1999-2012 in Chinese listed firms. Using the multiple liner regression, the authors empirically tests the relationship between the possibility, payout ratio and timing choice of stock dividends and the liquidity of ex ante announcement.

The authors find that the possibility of stock dividends policy has negative relationship with liquidity, and the relationship of stock dividends and liquidity of ex ante announcement is influenced by the time choice of stock dividends.

This paper study the reason of stock dividends policy from the perspective of liquidity and improve the traditional stock dividends liquidity hypothesis.

Being a developing nation with huge opportunity of growth prospects the assessment of valuation models becomes important to have a more realistic value estimate. The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the comparative accuracy and explanatory performance of discounted cash flow (DCF) and residual income model (RIM) valuation models for the Indian chemical industry and come up with a composite valuation model.

To achieve the objective of the study the authors first determine the intrinsic values using both the models. Comparisons of the models are based on prediction errors and the explanatory performance of market value on value estimates. The study uses panel regression to forecast estimates of earnings and measure explanatory performance. The authors examine the ability of the value estimates to explain cross-sectional variation in the observed market values. The study also uses GMM method for deriving robust estimators. Variables for the study are collected from the CMIE’s prowess data base (release 4). The authors consider all 1,075 BSE listed chemical companies for the purpose of the study. The study uses annual data points starting from 31 March 2002 to 31 March 2011.

The comparative framework shows that both Residual Income model and Composite Valuation model are superior to Discounted cash flow model and are equally likely. But since composite value estimates considers all bonafide informations of individual models, the estimates of Composite Valuation model becomes more reliable.

The study only compares and combines the two most widely used valuation models around the world. Future studies can be conducted using the third widely used valuation models, i.e. multiples and see the level of accuracy of individuals as well as the composite model.

As a concern very few research has been conducted in this area in India. This paper provides practitioners with a snapshot of the applicability of DCF and RIM valuation models. And also shows how a composite value estimate can improve accuracy.

This study aims to investigate the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the financial distress (FD) of firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX). Furthermore, the moderating effect of corporate governance (CG) on the CSR–distress relationship is investigated in this study.

The final sample of the study includes 117 companies from 2008 to 2021. The sample firms' CSR engagement is assessed using a multidimensional financial approach, and the likelihood of FD is determined using Altman's Z-score. The governance level is measured using the governance index, which includes 29 governance provisions. To achieve the research objectives, the system generalized method of moments estimator is used. Furthermore, several tests are performed to assess the robustness of the study's findings. The analysis was carried out using STATA software version 15.

The authors find that CSR is significantly inversely related to FD. The governance mechanism was discovered to be inversely related to FD. Furthermore, corporate governance strengthens the negative relationship between CSR and FD. In addition, the authors find that CSR is significantly inversely related to FD in firms with strong CG mechanisms but has no effect on FD in firms with weak CG mechanisms.

The findings of this study provide policymakers, business managers, regulators and investors with a better understanding of the relationship between the quality of CSR investments and the likelihood of FD in Pakistani firms, as well as the role of CG in this context.

This study contributes to our understanding of the role of CG in the CSR-distress relationship in an emerging market. This suggests that policymakers should prioritize CG quality while anticipating the impact of CSR on corporate FD.