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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.

This study presents a systematic review of the literature on monetary policy and corporate investment together with bibliometric analysis.

This study selected 455 articles from databases, Scopus and Web of science and the papers are reviewed systematically to identify their theoretical and empirical contributions.

The results reveal that monetary policy can influence corporate investment. Post to the economic crisis (2008), there is an exponential growth in the number of publications. Berger, A., and Hubbard are the two prominent authors based on the highest citation score, whereas Marquez, R., and Vermuelen, P. are the two prolific authors, subject to their highest h-index. Journal of Banking & Finance was the top journal (total citations = 1482) and 5 publications.

This study positively contributes to the comprehensive understanding of corporate investment, monetary policy transmission and firm capital structure choices.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that conducts a systematic review of the influence of monetary policy on corporate investment.

Financial flexibility and investment efficiency are of vital importance in strategic choices at boardrooms, particularly in post-crisis recovery strategies. This study examines the moderating effects of investment efficiency and investment scale on the relationship between financial flexibility and firm performance.

The authors use sample of 10,755 US-listed firms over the period 2010–2021 to examine the relationships between investment scale, investment efficiency, financial flexibility and firm performance. Particular attention is paid to overinvestment and underinvestment.

Findings of this study reveal that financial flexibility mitigates investment inefficiency through reducing overinvestment. Financial flexibility contributes to boost a firm’s accounting and market performance. Additionally, investment efficiency and investment scale have moderating effects on the relationship between financial flexibility and firm performance. However, the influence of investment efficiency is greater than the influence of investment scale. Finally, the authors find that the direct and indirect effects of financial flexibility are stronger on market performance than accounting performance, implying that market is more sensitive to corporate financial policies.

Findings of this study have implications for scholars, decision-makers policymakers, investors and other stakeholders.

This study has its own limitations due to the sample selection issues, country context and the research model adopted by this study.

The novel contribution to the extant literature is incorporating the influence of investment scale and investment efficiency into the relationship between financial flexibility and firm performance.

The current analysis aims to explore the role of cash holdings in the nexus of national governance and capital investment (CIN).

To achieve this aim, the authors sample the nonfinancial enterprises from 5 Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS) economies and employ system generalized method of moments(GMM) models as an estimation technique.

The empirical analysis infers that national governance has a positive relationship with CIN and a negative relationship with cash holdings. The cash holdings negatively determine CIN. However, the cash holdings show a positive relationship with CIN in the presence of the national governance index (NGI).

The important policy layout of the current analysis is that corporate managers should reduce cash holdings during better governance situations. Alternatively, corporate managers can disentangle the negative impact of bad country governance conditions on CIN by holding more cash.

The study is innovative as it explores mediating impact of cash holdings in the NGI-CIN nexus.

Existing theories on the determining factors of corporate investment decisions raise the importance of financial market imperfections in explaining investment behavior. Many factors have been proposed as drivers of investment, mainly in developed economies, while emerging countries have almost been neglected. The main purpose of this study is to examine the effect of financing constraints on the investment behavior of a small context, namely, Jordan, with an imperfect environment.

This study considers panel data regressions from the industrial companies traded at the Amman Stock Exchange with a total of 1,058 firm-year observations.

The results are able to demonstrate that business size, tangibility, market-to-book ratio, profitability, financial slack and leverage are major drivers of investment choices. The results support the importance of information asymmetry in explaining the investment behavior of firms. Nonetheless, the Q-theory is in place, as is firm agility.

Policies to reduce information asymmetry are immediately needed to help firms increase investments by providing them with access to training, technology and market information. They also should enhance the firms’ opportunities for growth. Moreover, they should make it easier for businesses to access financial slack, such as by improving access to credit and financial institutions. They also can work to improve the financial infrastructure to meet the financing needs of businesses. Finally, smaller businesses should be assisted by improving their ability to invest and grow.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies, if any, to investigate this issue in a distinct environment. Despite the unique characteristics of Jordan, the findings are applicable to other countries that experience comparable political and economic circumstances because Jordan has traits common to many emerging nations.

This study explores the influence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) career experience on the investment behavior and risk tolerance of chief executive officers (CEOs). Specifically, this study focuses on CEOs' abilities to allocate financial assets and maintain solvency.

This study adopts a comprehensive approach to analyze financial assets and asset-to-liability ratios. Financial data and individual information of CEOs from listed companies are collected from 2020Q1 to 2021Q4, along with statistics on confirmed COVID-19 cases. Instrumental and alternative variables are used to examine the robustness and endogeneity of the research, ensuring a thorough analysis.

A significant positive correlation is revealed between CEOs' COVID-19 career experience and their capacity to effectively allocate financial assets. However, COVID-19 has a negative effect on firm performance in terms of solvency. These findings contribute to the empirical evidence linking the pandemic to company performance, representing part of the initial research in this area.

The study suggests that the implementation of potential policy implications, such as loose monetary policies and tax and fee reduction measures, may alleviate the tax burden on listed companies.

This study aims to explore the relationship between institutional and macroeconomic factors and corporate financial flexibility while also investigating the moderating impact of selected board governance mechanisms on this relationship.

The sample of the study comprises 174 firms listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange for a period of eight years, from 2014 to 2021. Data were collected from secondary sources, and both descriptive and inferential statistical techniques were used for analyses.

Corporate financial flexibility is notably affected by profitability as an institutional factor and by gross domestic product growth rate and banking sector development as macroeconomic factors. Furthermore, the relationship between a company’s profitability and corporate financial flexibility is found to be moderated by selected board governance mechanisms. However, these governance mechanisms do not influence the relationship between corporate financial flexibility and other institutional factors (i.e. other than profitability) and macroeconomic factors considered in this study.

This study adds a fresh perspective to the existing body of knowledge in the field of corporate finance by emphasizing the interaction effect of board governance mechanisms on the association between macroeconomic and institutional variables and financial flexibility of firms. The findings are expected to be useful for business decision-makers in managing their corporate financial flexibility effectively and maximizing the use of their financial resources.

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.

The main purpose of this paper is to look at the link between chief executive officer (CEO) behavior and corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement with the moderating role of bank risk-taking behavior.

Based on a 13-year data set (2007–2019), the authors applied the feasible generalized least squares with panel data to test the hypotheses.

The findings reveal a positive and significant link between CEO behavior and CSR engagement. Based on these findings, it can be argued that the characteristics of the CEO of the banks would improve the CSR strategies. Furthermore, the study suggests a moderating effect of bank risk-taking in the link between psychological bias and corporate social responsibility engagement (CSR engagement).

As CEO behavioral characteristics are essential to understanding CSR practice, boards of directors should consider the behavioral traits of dominant and overconfident CEOs while designing CSR practices.

If the bank behaves in a socially responsible manner, direct and indirect stakeholders may be able to evaluate the level of risk-taking in more detail.

This research highlights the importance of CEO behavior characteristics for CSR, which is a crucial application that supports the upper echelons theory; and fills a gap in literature research. It is one of the few studies examining the interaction between risk-taking, CEO behavior and CSR engagement.

Based on the theory of performance feedback, this study aims to explore the theoretical relationship between performance shortfalls and the financialization of non-financial enterprises. It further analyzes the moderating effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and organizational redundant resources.

Multiple regression analysis is used on 16,555 initial samples of 2,658 Chinese A-share issuing enterprises from 2007 to 2019 to empirically test the relationship between performance shortfalls and the financialization of non-financial enterprises, and an instrumental variables-generalized moments estimation model is also used to verify the robustness of the results.

The results reveal that the greater the performance gap below the aspiration level, the higher the degree of enterprise financialization. Moreover, EPU strengthens the relationship between performance shortfalls and financialization, whereas organizational redundant resources weaken the relationship between performance shortfalls and financialization.

Decision-makers should determine the aspirated performance level of enterprises to make investment decisions that are most conducive to the long-term development of enterprises. Each enterprise should establish scientific management evaluation and supervision systems to avoid financial investment behaviors that place too much emphasis on short-term performance.

This study finds that financialization is one of the reactions when performance of enterprises is lower than the aspiration level, thus expanding the functional dimensions of performance feedback and supplementing the research on the influencing factors of enterprise financialization. The results also reveal information about situational factors, helping identify the boundary conditions through which performance below aspirations affects enterprise financialization.