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This study aims to explore the impact of board gender diversity on firms’ forward-looking risk, as perceived by both the firm’s management and its investors. The authors seek to understand whether the presence of female directors and the consequent enhancement of board dynamics can influence a firm’s risk profile.

The authors use firms’ cash holdings and option implied volatility as proxies for future risk. The approach involves a rigorous analysis that accounts for potential concerns related to selection bias, endogeneity, heteroskedasticity and serial correlation. The authors further substantiate the findings through robustness checks, including a dynamic panel system general method of moment test and a Heckman correction model.

The results reveal an inverse relationship between board gender diversity and firms’ expected risk. The findings suggest that the primary driver of this risk reduction is the improvement in the group dynamics of the board that comes with increased gender diversity. This implies that gender diverse boards can significantly influence a firm’s risk management and financial performance.

The results indicate that gender diverse firms have economically and statistically significantly less expected risk and have better financial performance than firms with less board gender diversity. This has important implications for the organization of corporate boards.

If the addition of female directors alters the risk aversion of the board, then management may be compelled to alter their investment and production decisions that, ultimately, affects firms’ profitability. In addition, the authors investigate whether changes to firm risk is due to gender differences in risk preferences or to an improvement in the group dynamics of the board.

The empirical results suggest that the effect of board gender diversity on firms’ expected risk and financial performance may be due to an improvement in the collective intelligence of the board, as a result of more gender diversity, and not due to gender differences in risk preferences.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work is the first to study the effect of board gender diversity on firms’ future risk.

This study examines the relationship between oil price uncertainty (OPU) and corporate inventory investments using a sample of 6,072 USA manufacturing firms from 1992 to 2019.

The author's study employs a panel dataset to examine the relationship between OPU and corporate inventory investments. The author uses several alternative specifications such as fixed effects models, an instrumental variable analysis, an impact threshold for confounding variable (ITCV) analysis, alternative measures, additional control variables and the percent bias analysis to account for endogeneity issues.

Corporate inventory investments decrease in response to high OPU. This decrease in inventory investments happens regardless of firms' expected stockout costs, information environment and reliance on external financing. As a potential mechanism, an uncertainty-induced increase in cash holdings contributes to this reduction in inventory investments. Also, the effect of OPU is non-linear and asymmetric. In response to the volatility of positive (negative) oil price changes, inventory investments decrease (increase) up to a certain point and increase (decrease) after that. Further, uncertainty-induced adjustments in inventory investments positively influence the operating performance of firms.

The author's study adds to the growing literature that examines the impact of OPU on corporate outcomes. Inventory investments directly affect business operations and could better reflect firms' responses to an uncertain environment.

This paper aims to examine the effects of oil price uncertainty on corporate investment of Islamic stocks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study uses a panel data set that covers 398 listed Islamic stocks from seven major Asia Pacific countries over the period of five years from 2017 to 2021, yielding 1,990 observations. Specifically, this paper investigates the said association by combining the real options theory regarding investment and the panel data-based econometric method that captures the dynamic relationship, the generalized method of moments estimators.

The findings show that the relationship between the oil price volatility and corporate investment of Islamic stocks is significant and nonlinear in nature, suggesting the presence of both the growth options and the waiting options. Overall, the results reveal that corporate investment of Islamic stocks is hindered during the unprecedented corona crash, when oil price increases at exponential rates.

The findings suggest that considering the information caused by unprecedented events like the COVID-19 pandemic is crucial for investment decisions of Islamic stocks. Therefore, policymakers and regulators should incorporate the impact of oil price uncertainties caused by unprecedented events like the COVID-19 pandemic on firm’s investment expansion and diversification strategies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to examine the relationship between the investment of Islamic stocks and the oil price uncertainty under compound options theory in top Asian oil-importing countries.

This study examines the impact of CSR (corporate social responsibility) on stock price volatility of oil and gas firms and, then identifies the moderating role of tax avoidance.

To achieve the study's purposes, 330 observations are extracted from 30 oil and gas firms for the period between 2010 and 2020, and the estimation method of the Generalized Least Squares (GLS) is used. Actually, the CSR is proxied using the ESG (environmental, social, and governance) score, and the stock price volatility is measured by the degree of stock price variations over 12 months, according to the last 52 week's price.

The main findings indicate that CSR negatively impacts the stock price volatility. Nonetheless, this negative relationship is moderated positively by tax avoidance. This result is robust to the variation in the measure of volatility, namely the systematic risk.

This research is helpful for investors to manage their portfolio risk as this article highlights the importance of engaging in sustainable development to reduce financial risk. This study also helps regulators and policymakers, such as environmental agencies and tax authorities, to reassess their control with oil and gas firms and record them according to their CSR practices, because this article emphasizes that it is not fair to pay taxes and engage in CSR practices at the same time.

The impact of CSR on stock price volatility is widely treated for firms. Nevertheless, the mechanisms that may affect this relationship are still seldom discussed. This study attempts to examine the impact of tax avoidance on the CSR–stock price volatility relationship for the oil and gas industry.

It has been argued in the literature that structural changes in the financial markets, such as integration, have the potential to cause herding behavior or correlated behavioral patterns in traders. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether there is any financial herding behavior in the Latin American Integrated Market (MILA), a transnational stock market composed of Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico stock exchanges and whether there is any ARCH or GARCH effect in the herding behavior models.

This study uses the modified return dispersion approach on daily index return data. The sample period is from January 03, 2002 to May 07, 2019. The data are obtained from the MILA database. To count time-varying volatilities in herding models, the authors run ARCH family regression with GARCH (1,1) settings. Hwang and Salmon (2004) model is used as a robustness test.

The authors found strong herding behavior under the general market conditions and moderate and partial herding behavior under some specified markets circumstances, such as bull and bear markets and high-low volatility states. Moreover, the pre-MILA period exhibits more herding behavior than the post-MILA period. The empirical results show that most of the ARCH and GARCH effects are statistically significant, implying that the past information of stock returns and market volatility significantly affect the volatility of following periods, which can also explain the formation of herding tendency among investors. Finally, the results of the robustness tests (Hwang and Salmon, 2004) confirm herding in all periods, except full sample period for Mexico and post-MILA period for Mexico and Colombia.

This study investigates the herding behavior in the MILA market in terms of market return, volatility and timing. A limitation of the paper is that the authors have not included other factors on the formation of herding behavior, such as macroeconomic factors, effects of regional or international markets and policy influences. The authors will explore the issue in the extension of the paper.

As MILA is the first virtual integration of stock exchanges without merging, the study provides useful findings and draws good inferences of herding behavior in the MILA market in terms of market return, volatility and timing which are useful for academics, investors and policymakers in their investment and decision makings.

The paper provides useful findings and draws good inferences of herding behavior in the MILA market in terms of market return, volatility and timing which are not only useful in practical implications, but also in social implications.

This study contributes to the herding literature by examining four different hypotheses in respect of the unique case of transnational stock exchange without fusions or corporate mergers, where each market maintains its independence and regulatory autonomy. The authors also contribute to the literature by including both ARCH and GARCH effects in the herding behavioral models along the Hwang and Salmon (2004) approach.

Start-ups are successful in receiving valuation in billions of US dollars prior to initial public offering (IPO). However, to sustain higher valuation, the stocks need to perform consistently after the IPO. Short-run stock performance of India-based start-ups during the first year of IPO listing from March 2021 to March 2022 is analysed.

The paper deals with the new generation start-ups' stock performance in emerging market in terms of total and abnormal return generated in comparison to the market (NIFTY-200). Further, the volatility of returns during bear and bull regimes is analysed through a family of Markov-switching GARCH models using both normal and skewed distributions.

The results suggest that start-up stocks are more volatile during bear regime than in the bull run in market-based economies where price limit policy does not apply. Besides, the cumulative abnormal return over the market return was lower for majority of start-up IPO stocks.

Though negative returns of the start-up stocks during the first year of IPO need not be surprising, higher volatility during bear regime is a matter of concern as it could severely impact retail investors and founders. The results hold implication for IPO regulation in emerging markets and for retail investors desirous of investing in start-up stocks.

Volatility of return is examined using a state-space model during the first year of the start-up IPO listing. The study contributes to the emerging market IPO literature by examining IPO performance in market-based economy. Previous IPO performance studies in emerging markets are predominantly based on ecosystems where start-ups are subjected to price limit policy, and it does not reflect the true nature of IPO performance across emerging markets.

This study aims to examine the impact of institutional investors and their classes on the stock return volatility of an emerging market. The paper also determines the moderating role of firm size, crisis and turnover on such relationships.

The study covers nonfinancial companies of the Bombay Stock Exchange-100 index that are listed during the study period. The study uses fixed effects and systematic generalized method of moments estimators to look over the association between institutional investors and firms’ stock return volatility.

The study provides evidence that institutional investors destabilize the Indian stock market. It indicates that institutional investors do not engage in management activities; they earn short-term gains depending on information efficiency. Pressure-insensitive institutional investors have a significant positive relation with stock return volatility, while pressure-sensitive institutional investors do not. The study also reflects that pressure-sensitive institutional investors are underweighted in India, which jointly represents an insignificant nonlinear association between institutional ownership and stocks’ volatility. Furthermore, outcomes reveal that the intersection effect of the crisis, firm size and turnover is positively and significantly related to such relationships.

The outcomes encourage initiatives that keep track of institutional investors in the Indian stock market. To control the destabilizing effect of pressure-insensitive institutional investors, regulators should follow strict regulations on their trading patterns. Moreover, it guides the potential researchers that they should also take into account the impact of other classes of ownership structure or what type of ownership can help in stabilizing or destabilizing the Indian stock market.

Abundant literature studies the relationship between institutional ownership and firm performance in the Indian context. From the standpoint of making management decisions, the return and volatility of stock returns are both different aspects. However, this study examines the effect of institutional ownership and its groups on the volatility of stock return using the panel data estimator, which was previously not discussed in the literature.

The aim of this research is to examine the effect of corporate sustainability performance on financial performance and the role of agency costs and business risk in determining this effect.

This study uses the data of 83 non-financial Turkish firms listed on Istanbul Stock Exchange during the period 2014–2021. Two-step system GMM models are applied to examine the study’s hypotheses.

The results indicate a positive effect of corporate sustainability performance on financial performance, and that this effect is significant only for firms that are more likely to suffer agency costs of equity, firms with R&D expenditures and firms with lower business risk.

The results of this study confirm the importance of regulations introduced by regulators to support the sustainability initiatives for firms that have less ability to access funds required for their investments. In addition, the findings provide important insight into the role of the persistence of corporate sustainability performance in enhancing financial performance through mitigating managers' opportunistic behavior.

To the author’s knowledge, this research is one of few that examine the effect of agency costs and business risk on the corporate sustainability–financial performance relationship in emerging markets.

This paper provides new evidence on Indian tourism firms by investigating the role of a firm's financial conditions typified by its leverage, earnings, size, cash holdings, and excess cash in moderating the pandemic-led idiosyncratic volatility in its stock prices.

The authors employ a firm-level panel comprising 82 publicly-listed tourism firms from India. Firm risk is estimated for the period beginning January 2020 to December 2020.

This paper finds non-linear effects of the pandemic on the idiosyncratic risk of the sample firms. Precisely, stock price volatility rises, but as the market absorbs this information, volatility subsides even as the disease spreads further. Further, lower levels of past debt and earnings and higher cash holdings ameliorate the pandemic's effects on tourism firms' risk. Contrasting the view that “excess” cash reflects poor operational performance, we show that “excess” cash firms are better prepared to face the adverse effects of the pandemic.

This study’s sample period fully encompasses the first wave of the pandemic (January–December 2020) of the novel coronavirus infection spread.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to assess the moderating effects of company fundamentals on the risk of Indian tourism firms. In doing so, the authors account for non-linear effects of the pandemic on firms' idiosyncratic volatility over time.

This current study draws a comparison between the performance indicators of public sector banks (PSBs) and private sector banks (or non-PSBs) in India. The study controls for the impact of COVID-19.

The study uses strongly balanced panel data for seven years of 12 PSBs and 10 non-PSBs from the Nifty PSU Bank Index and Nifty Private Bank Index. The study applies panel data methodology to arrive at the results.

The study demonstrates that the behavior of indicators of performance and returns volatility for PSBs and non-PSBs differs substantially. While factors like capital adequacy ratio (CAR), cost management (COST), liquidity (LIQ), inflation and economic growth exhibit a similar impact on both categories of Indian banks, the effect of credit risk (RISK), market power (POWER) and COVID-19 on performance and returns stability is different for PSBs and non-PSBs.

There is a limited sample size of banks in India.

PSBs and non-PSBs need distinct treatments when calibrating performance indicators.

The performance and stability of banks are essential for society at large, the depositors and the investors.

The study provides vibrant implications for insight for banks to calibrate the variables that determine performance and stability, regulators and policymakers for effective governance of the banking ecosystem and effective utilization of public funds and capital. The findings are relevant for policymaking today, when the government is considering the privatization of a few PSBs.