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This study investigates CSR reporting’s role in debt access and cost of debt with the moderating role of external assurance and GRI adoption in emerging markets. Such an investigation will help facilitate external fund flow to firms in better terms.

We collected data from 16 emerging markets between 2008 and 2019 from the Thomson Reuters Eikon and ran fixed effects regression analysis and robustness tests by addressing endogeneity concerns, adopting alternative sample and integrating additional control variables.

The results show that CSR reporting has a positive association with access to debt and a negative association with the cost of debt. Furthermore, both external assurance and GRI adoption do not significantly moderate between CSR reporting and access to debt and cost of debt. Hence, creditors in emerging markets are not interested in CSR report assurance and GRI framework adoption and do not integrate them into their lending decisions.

Emerging markets are unique settings characterized by high growth rates, limited capital availability, high debt costs and weak institutional environments. Thus, reaching debt with convenient conditions is critical for emerging market firms to finance their growth. Hence, our study will help emerging market firms reach external funding more easily and in better terms via CSR transparency. Besides, our investigation is based on a broad sample of emerging markets, and hence updates prior emerging market studies conducted in single-country settings. Lastly, we test the complementarity of third-party assurance and GRI adoption to CSR reporting in loan contracting.

This study aims to investigate whether social reputation via corporate social responsibility (CSR) awarding facilitates access to debt and decreases the cost of debt and whether governance mechanisms moderate this relationship.

The sample covers the period between 2002 and 2021, during which CSR award data were available in the Thomson Reuters Eikon/Refinitiv database. The empirical models are based on country, industry and year fixed-effects regression.

While the main findings produced an insignificant result for access to debt, they indicated strong evidence for the positive relationship between CSR awarding and the cost of debt. Moreover, the moderating effect highlights that while the sustainability committee helps CSR-awarded companies access debt more easily, independent directors help firms decrease the cost of debt via CSR awarding. Furthermore, the results differ between the US and the non-US samples, earlier and recent periods, high- and low-leverage firms and large and small firms.

For the first time, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the authors assess whether social reputation via CSR awarding facilitates access to debt and decreases the cost of debt in an international and cross-industry sample. Little is known about the effect of social reputation on loan contracting, although social reputation conveys broader information that goes beyond the firm’s internal (performance) and external (reporting) CSR practices. The authors also draw attention to the differing roles of distinct governance mechanisms in leveraging social reputation for loan contracting.

This article aims to analyse the relationship between the environmental, social and governance (ESG) score and the cost of capital of 600 large, mid and small capitalization companies across 17 countries that are component of the EURO STOXX 600 Index. By examining whether ESG has an impact on the cost of capital, this article contributes to the solutions to improve the impact of organizations and societies on sustainable development. The article further examines whether the effect is because of the environmental, social and/or governance components. In addition, the article analyses which WACC component (i.e. the cost of equity, the cost of debt, the beta or the leverage ratio) is affected. Furthermore, this article analyses whether a high ESG score can substitute for a weaker legal environment.

The results were obtained by using ordinary least squares panel data modelling to analyse the relationship between the ESG score and the cost of capital. The sample consists of companies that are part of the STOXX Europe 600 Index over the period 2018–2021, which is composed of 600 companies, including large, mid and small capitalization firms listed across 17 countries. The sample finally includes 1,960 firm-year observations.

Companies with a higher ESG score tend to have a lower cost of capital, but this relationship holds only for firms domiciled in countries with a weaker legal environment. In addition, these firms should not only increase their ESG score to create a more sustainable environment but also to reduce their cost of debt. Environmental and social factors have a significantly negative impact on the cost of capital only in countries with a weaker legal environment, while the governance component positively impacts the cost of capital by allowing firms to borrow more.

There is not yet a standardized taxonomy to define ESG, making the study dependent on commercial data providers.

The new insights can be used by companies domiciled in countries with weaker legal environments to reduce their cost of capital. The results also allow us to know on which components of the ESG score to focus. It can also help policymakers, specifically those in countries with a weaker legal environment, to provide incentives to further stimulate ESG investments and disclosure, thereby contributing to a more sustainable society.

To achieve the sustainable development goals put forward by the United Nations, it is important for firms to invest in ESG projects. It is nevertheless insightful to know whether these ESG investments, which are currently observed as a cost, also provide benefits to firms and in which countries. If firms clearly see the advantages of investing in ESG projects, they are likely to proactively engage in them.

This article is the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to focus on 17 European countries, thereby capturing divergent legal environments. This setting allows us to answer the main novel research question, namely, whether the ESG score can act as a substitute for the legal environment in which the company is domiciled. The article also goes further than previous articles by examining whether the effect is because of the environmental, social and/or governance component and whether these impact the components of the weighted cost of capital, namely, the cost of equity, the cost of debt, the beta or the leverage ratio of the companies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between CEOs' inside debt holdings (pension benefits and deferred compensation) and the operating leverage of the firms they manage, with the aim to examine whether CEO incentives play a role in corporate risk-taking.

The authors investigate the relation between CEO inside debt holdings (CIDH) (pension benefits and deferred compensation) and the operating leverage (DOL) of the firms they manage. Using a sample of 11,145 US firm-year observations over the period 2006–2017, the authors find a strong negative association between CIDH and DOL. Additional analyses reveal that the relationship between CIDH and DOL is more pronounced in firms with heightened agency issues, powerful CEOs and for CEOs with stronger professional networks. The results are robust to various sensitivity and endogeneity tests.

The authors find strong evidence confirming the expected negative association between CEO inside debt and DOL suggesting that firms with higher inside debt tend to maintain lower levels of operating leverage. These findings continue to hold with the alternative measure for the inside debt and operating leverage, and across a range of tests designed to rule out the possibility that the primary findings are in any way driven by potential endogeneity. In addition, the findings demonstrate that the presence of manager-shareholder agency conflicts can strengthen the inside debt–DOL relationship suggesting the strong role of inside debt in reducing firm risk.

Findings in this paper have implications for design of compensation structures so that corporate boards can establish incentives as a tool for risk management. A limitation of this study is that it is focused on one market, i.e. US listed companies, so the findings may not be applicable on a global scale.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that links firm-level management of operating leverage through design of CEO inside debt incentives (two obvious choices for risk-reduction at the CEOs’ disposal include reducing financial risk through reduction of firm leverage and reducing operating risk through reduction of operating leverage). While use of firm leverage as an instrument of choice has been explored in the past, use of operating leverage to achieve risk reduction when CEO possess high inside holding, has received very little attention.

While some countries have used debt to drive economic growth, the asymmetric effect on sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries has received little attention in the empirical literature. This paper therefore examines the asymmetric effect of external debts on economic growth.

The panel nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) approach was employed in the study for 29 sub-Saharan African countries from 1990 to 2021. The cross-sectional dependence test was used to determine the presence of cross-sectional dependence, while the second-generation panel unit root tests was used to examine the unit-root properties.

The empirical results show that external debt has an asymmetric effect on economic growth in both the short and long run. In the long run, a positive shock in external debts of 1% triggers an upturn in economic growth by 0.216% while a negative shock triggers 0.354% decline in economic growth. This implies that the negative shock of external debts has a much stronger impact on economic growth than the positive shock. In the short run, a positive shock in external debts by 1% triggers a decline in economic growth by 0.641%, while a negative shock of 1% triggers a fall in economic growth of 0.170%.

The paper used the NARDL model to examine the asymmetric impact of external debt on the economic growth of SSA countries, which has not been extensively studied. It is recommended that governments in the selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa should drive economic growth by promoting domestic revenue mobilization since external debts impede economic growth.

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.

This paper delves into the ex ante rates of return demanded by the private sector in Indonesian public–private partnership (PPP) infrastructure projects and the manifold factors emanating from project attributes that can influence these rates.

This paper analyzes feasibility studies of 37 PPP projects across different sectors. The studies were carefully selected based on relevance, completeness and validity of data. The analysis uses statistical techniques, including Levene’s tests, t-tests, ANOVA tests, Cohen’s effect size and Pearson correlations, to explore differences in cost of capital and excess returns across various attributes.

Based on the statistical analysis, no significant difference exists between the excess return of 200 basis points (bps) and the equity excess return of 0 bps. This suggests that the eligibility criteria for PPP projects require an internal rate of return (IRR) equal to the weighted average cost of capital plus 200 bps or an equity IRR equal to the cost of equity. The variations in the tested variables among diverse project attributes do not exhibit statistically significant disparities, even though specific attributes display moderate to high effect sizes.

This paper represents one of the first attempts to examine the rates of return demanded by the private sector in the context of Indonesian PPP projects. It comprehensively explores the factors that influence these rates, drawing on insights derived from feasibility studies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of bankruptcy reform in the year 2016 on the relation between leverage and firm performance for Indian firms, separately for business group and standalone firms.

Fixed effects panel regression is used to understand the role of bankruptcy reform on firm-level data to examine the relationship between leverage and firm performance after controlling for size, growth, age, liquidity and promoter shareholding. The authors also apply the generalized method of moments (GMM) to control for the endogeneity concerns.

The authors show that the introduction of the insolvency and bankruptcy code (IBC) positively moderates the relation between leverage and firm performance such that the extent of negative relation between leverage and firm performance is less in the post-IBC period. The positive impact of IBC on the relation between leverage and firm performance holds only for firms not affiliated to business groups and for firms with higher debt in their capital structure.

The study’s findings will help the regulators appreciate the effectiveness of bankruptcy reforms resulting from IBC implementation in terms of sound bankruptcy process and leading to safeguard the interests of minority shareholders.

The authors provide the only study to examine the role of bankruptcy law in moderating the relation between leverage and firm performance across a sample of business group and standalone firms.

The behavioural theory adds a new paradigm of analysis with the assumptions of the decision maker’s cognitive biases and their repercussions on financing decisions. The aim of the study is to analyse the repercussions of these biases on the adjustment speed of firm’s capital structure toward the optimal level.

Based on a partial adjustment model, the study uses the Dynamic Panel Fractional estimator to analyse panel data from 4,990 Portuguese entrepreneurial firms.

The results show that the cognitive overconfidence bias impacts the entrepreneurial firm’s capital structure. In fact, the firms run by overconfident managers adjust more slowly than their counterparts. Furthermore, the findings suggest that entrepreneurial firms make relatively fast adjustments toward the optimal debt level and follow a hierarchical financing order in the funding process.

The results of this paper are not only interesting to the academia, but also contain practical implications for corporate, institutional and business policy and governance. First, the paper introduces a new measure of cognitive bias in optimistic managers, which is useful for current and future academic research. Also, in practical terms, the findings of the paper reveal that when a company is contemplating hiring a manager, it should consider whether they need an optimistic or non-optimistic manager based on the company's present life cycle or situation.

The current analysis extends the existing literature. The study suggests that financial classical and behavioural paradigms should not be separated, which can provide evidence to help narrow the gap between these two major perspectives.

This paper investigates the impact of financial integration on the capital structure of the firms operating in mainland China, examining the firm-level and country-level integrating variables for 2,878 listed Chinese firms over the period of 1991–2016 in regard to the firms' capital structures. Finally, the study revisits the associations for the state-owned and multinational firms in the context of China.

A large sample of unbalanced data from firms were used to explore the relationship firm-level and country-level integrating variables has with firm leverage and maturity; this is accomplished using the fixed effect model. For robustness, a system-generalised method of moments was used.

The results indicate that internationalisation positively impacts the leverage and debt maturity of all listed Chinese firms and multinational firms and that state-owned firms are financed mainly by the state. For country-level integration, the authors find that credit and equity markets are negatively related to a firm's leverage. A negative relation with credit markets suggests that Chinese firms have much cheaper financing options than the benefits that arise from credit market integration. Moreover, the effect of equity market integration is more pronounced on Chinese firms' capital structure and debt maturity than credit market integration.

The results provide valuable implications of financial integration for policymakers as well as capital structure decision-making for managers in China.

Few studies have examined the impact of integration on firms' capital structures in developing countries. After controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity, this study adds new multilevel integration evidence on the capital structure of Chinese firms.