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This paper aims to contribute to the development of the European Union (EU) regulatory environment for sustainability reporting by analyzing how materiality is defined in the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) and Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and by examining the added value and challenges of legalizing reporting and materiality requirements from both regulatory and practical company perspectives. It provides insights on whether this is reflected by EU pharmaceutical companies and to what extent companies report information on their materiality analysis process.

Doctrinal analysis was used to examine regulatory instruments. Qualitative document analysis was used to analyze companies’ reports. The added value and challenges were examined using a governance approach. It focused on legalizing reporting and materiality requirements, with a brief extension to corporate management and organization studies.

Materiality has evolved from a vague concept in the NFRD toward double materiality in the CSRD. This was reflected by the industry, but reports revealed inconsistencies in materiality definitions and reported information. Challenges include lack of self-reflection and company-centric perceptions of materiality. Companies should explain how they identify relevant stakeholders and how input is considered in decision-making.

Managers must consider how they conduct materiality assessments to meet society’s expectations. The underlying processes should be explained to increase the credibility of reports. Sustainability reporting should be seen as a corporate governance tool.

This work contributes to the literature on materiality in sustainability reporting and to the debate on the need for a holistic, society-centric approach to enhance the sustainability of companies.

This study aims to investigate the effects of board cultural diversity (BCD) and board gender diversity (BGD) of the board of directors on environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance in the European banking sector using resource-based view (RBV) theory. In addition, this study analyses the linkages between BCD and BGD and knowledge sharing on the board of directors to improve ESG performance.

This study selected a sample of European-listed banks covering the period 2021. ESG and diversity variables were collected from Refinitiv Eikon and analysed using the ordinary least squares model. This study was conducted in the European context regulated by Directive 95/2014/EU, which requires sustainability disclosure. The original population was represented by 250 banks; after missing data were excluded, the final sample comprised 96 European-listed banks.

The findings highlight the positive linkages between BGD, BCD and ESG scores in the European banking sector. In addition, the findings highlight that diversity contributes to knowledge sharing by improving ESG performance in a regulated sector. Nonetheless, the combined effect of BGD and BCD negatively impacts ESG performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to measure and analyse a regulated sector, such as banking, and the relationship between cultural and gender diversity for sharing knowledge under the RBV theory lens in the ESG framework.

This paper aims to establish a fundamental and comprehensive understanding of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) by identifying and structuring common characteristics within a taxonomy. NFTs are hyped and increasingly marketed as essential building blocks of the Metaverse. However, the dynamic evolution of the NFT space has posed challenges for those seeking to develop a deep and comprehensive understanding of NFTs, their features and their capabilities.

Utilizing common guidelines for the creation of taxonomies, the authors developed (over 3 iterations), a multi-layer taxonomy based on workshops and interviews with 11 academic and 15 industry experts. Through an evaluation of 25 NFTs, the authors demonstrate the usefulness of the taxonomy.

The taxonomy has 4 layers, 14 dimensions and 42 characteristics, which describe NFTs in terms of reference object, token properties, token distribution and realizable value.

The authors' framework is the first to systematically cover the emerging NFT phenomenon. This framework is concise yet extendible and presents many avenues for future research in a plethora of disciplines. The characteristics identified in the authors' taxonomy are useful for NFT- and Metaverse-related research in finance, marketing, law and information systems. Additionally, the taxonomy can serve as an information source for policymakers as they consider NFT regulation.

The Ireland-Northern Ireland Protocol has been one of the most contentious aspects of the EU-UK post-Brexit trade relationship. By requiring the UK to comply with EU customs and internal market rules in relation to Northern Ireland (NI), the Protocol has created a hybrid trade regime where NI is subject to multiple, overlapping and often conflicting rules. This paper aims to examine one area in which this hybridity manifests itself. It focusses on the interplay between the Protocol and post-Brexit UK trade agreements. It examines potential areas of conflict between Protocol obligations and obligations derived from UK trade agreements. In doing so, it sheds light on the extent to which compliance with the Protocol may undermine NI’s ability to export and import goods under the preferential terms negotiated under UK trade agreements. It further discusses the consequences of these incompatibilities between the Protocol and these agreements for NI and, more widely, the functioning of the UK internal market as whole.

Doctrinal legal research

The paper examines potential areas of conflict between Protocol obligations and obligations derived from UK trade agreements. In doing so, it sheds light on the extent to which compliance with the Protocol may undermine NI’s ability to export and import goods under the preferential terms negotiated under UK trade agreements. It further discusses the consequences of these incompatibilities between the Protocol and these agreements for NI and, more widely, the functioning of the UK internal market as whole.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge this is the first paper carrying out a comprehensive legal analysis of the interaction and potential conflicts between the Protocol on Ireland-Northern Ireland and the UK’s post Brexit trade agreements.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the metaverse platform in a social context to better understand the future of this tool in tourism cities and how this can help to improve the well-being of residents in both digital and physical scenarios.

In this paper, the current and probable developments in the metaverse, and its use in tourism cities and companies have been investigated. Moreover, this study develops, collects and examines the main metaverse definitions by expert authors and organizations as a methodology to ensure the transparency and credibility of the metaverse analysis.

Findings suggest that the fusion of the metaverse and tourism cities must create residents’ services and experiences in the new MetaTourPolis to help interact and connect citizens with the city’s institutions and companies, as well as make tourism cities more attractive, innovative, environmentally friendly and healthier places to live. Metaverse will bring new changes for residents and tourists, in fact, this virtual platform is already changing and improving the residents’ quality of life and people with disabilities in tourism cities. For instance, the metaverse platform has been implemented in Seoul, Santa Monica and Dubai MetaTourPolis to interact with their residents, including people with disabilities, to resolve bureaucratic and administrative problems, avoiding this group and the rest of the residents travelling by bus or car to the city’s institutions. In addition, several metaverse applications based on softbot tutors or metaverse virtual social centres have been developed to improve blind and impaired people, and elderly people’ quality of life, respectively.

A new concept called “MetaTourPolis” has been included to stage the relationship between tourism cities and the metaverse platform, where the fusion of metaverse and the new tourism polis of the 21st century will be at the service of citizens, tourists and companies, to create more sustainable, efficient, quantitative and environmental tourism cities.

This article aims to investigate the financial constraints and nonlinearity of farm size growth.

Farm size growth is measured with land, labor and output using data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) for Hungary and Slovenia. A dynamic panel model is applied to assess financial constraints and nonlinearity of farm size growth.

Results show that, except for land in Slovenia and output in Hungary, liquidity constraints are less important for farm size growth than endogenous factors based on farm size growth expectations and steady farm size restructuring. Smaller farms are growing faster than larger ones. The hypothesis that a higher level of subsidies would increase farm size is not supported for Hungary. When farms reach a certain size, the land area of the largest farms increases. Farm debts in Hungary are linked with land growth and in Slovenia with output growth.

Further research on the impact of liquidity constraints and subsidies can be conducted at a disaggregate farm-type level to examine whether there is variability in the underlying interlinkages at the farm-type specialization level.

The implication that farm size growth is dependent on initial size and that smaller farms are growing faster than bigger ones indicates that it is not necessary to favor the fastest growing smaller farms thus supports the application of a non-discriminatory farm size policy for observing farm size structural changes.

The dynamic panel econometric model that incorporates cash flow as a measure of financial constraints provides insight into farm size growth in cross-country comparison in relation to potential farm liquidity constraints, farm debt and the nonlinearity of farm size, which information is of relevance to policy makers and practitioners.

Recent developments in the EU’s anti-corruption strategy have brought the EU closer to meeting the UNCAC’s objectives, i.e. the Proposal for a Directive on combating corruption (2023) and the Proposal for a Directive on Asset Recovery and Confiscation (2022). This paper aims to discuss these developments from the perspective of the UNCAC, to identify missing elements in the EU’s asset recovery mechanisms.

Critical approach towards EU anti-corruption policy (discussing the problems and solutions). Review of EU developments in asset recovery law.

There is a political will on the part of the EU to fight corruption through the rules enshrined in the UNCAC. However, improving EU law by introducing a new type of confiscation of unexplained wealth and criminalising illicit enrichment, without establishing convergent rules for the return of corrupt assets from EU territory to the countries of origin, cannot be seen as sufficient action to achieve the UNCAC’s objectives. In modelling mechanisms of the return of assets, the EU should search for solutions to overcome the difficulties resulting from the ordre public clause remaining a significant factor conditioning mutual legal assistance.

This paper discusses the possible input of the EU, as a non-State Party to the UNCAC, to advance implementing the UNCAC solutions on asset recovery by establishing convergent rules for the return of corrupt assets from EU territory to countries of origin.

The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The systematic, continuous and profound attempt to answer the Smithian social coordination problem shaped North's journey from being a young serious Marxist to becoming one of the founders of New Institutional Economics. In the process, he was converted in the early 1950s into a rigid neoclassical economist, being one of the leaders in promoting New Economic History. The success of the cliometric revolution exposed the frailties of the movement itself, namely, the limitations of neoclassical economic theory to explain economic growth and social change. Incorporating transaction costs, the institutional framework in which property rights and contracts are measured, defined and enforced assumes a prominent role in explaining economic performance.

In the early 1970s, North adopted a naive theory of institutions and property rights still grounded in neoclassical assumptions. Institutional and organizational analysis is modeled as a social maximizing efficient equilibrium outcome. However, the increasing tension between the neoclassical theoretical apparatus and its failure to account for contrasting political and institutional structures, diverging economic paths and social change propelled the modification of its assumptions and progressive conceptual innovation. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, North abandoned the efficiency view and gradually became more critical of the objective rationality postulate. In this intellectual movement, North's avant-garde research program contributed significantly to the creation of New Institutional Economics.

The purpose of this article is based on the unit patent license fee model in the closed-loop supply chain.

This paper analyzes the impact of the bundling strategy of the retailer selling new products and remanufactured products on the closed-loop supply chain under the condition that the original manufacturer produces new products and the remanufacturer produces remanufacturing products.

The results show that alternative products can be bundled, and in many cases, the bundling of remanufactured products and new products is better than selling alone.

If the retailer chooses bundling, for the remanufacturer, when certain conditions are met, the benefits of bundling are greater than the separate sales at that time; for the original manufacturer, when the recycling price sensitivity coefficient is high, the bundling is better than separate sales.

This paper aims to focus on the need for an enhanced anti-money laundering (AML) regulation for decentralised finance (DeFi) to protect the integrity of global financial systems against illicit activities. Research highlights the requirement for a robust regulatory strategy for the fast-paced DeFi evolvement.

This study used doctrinal legal research by analysing legislation, which involved creating use cases to illustrate different aspects of potential illicit activities via the DeFi ecosystem. Various DeFi applications were assessed for the potential regulatory responses and outcomes.

This paper offers valuable insight into the regulatory challenges presented by DeFi. This study addresses the blind spots leveraged by criminals afforded by the DeFi’s decentralised nature. This paper offers a comprehensive examination of DeFi regulatory challenges based on use-case scenarios and provides recommendations for regulators on how to address them effectively.

This paper proposes measures for regulatory authorities to minimise money laundering risks through new channels such as decentralised exchanges, non-custodial wallets and cross-chain bridges. This study concludes with the future directions for DeFi regulation and AML compliance.