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The global energy sector draws significant stakeholder attention due to never-ending controversies surrounding its environmental impacts. Investors’ response to such controversies causes direct financial implications for these firms. Furthermore, environmental, social and governance (ESG) sensitivity, which is likely to safeguard the energy sector firms from such controversies, is itself conditional to the development stage of a country and its regulatory environment. Therefore, this study aims to investigate if the influence of ESG on the share price volatility (SPV) of energy sector firms is subject to the development stage of the countries.

The study investigates nine years of panel data of 93 global energy sector firms from developing and developed nations. Using dynamic two-way fixed effects estimation and computing robust standard errors to obtain the econometric results.

The main finding reveals that the impact of ESG on SPV is, indeed, subject to the development stage of the nations. Similar results are observed for the effects of the social dimension of ESG on SPV. While ESG impacts the SPV negatively for firms in developing economies, the impact is the opposite for firms in developed nations. In other words, strong ESG propositions induce share price stability for developing countries while destabilizing the firms in developed nations.

The policymakers should further streamline the regulations and policies related to ESG adoption and adherence. In practice, the energy sectors should streamline their operations. Firm managers, especially in the energy sector, should devise strategies with ESG as an essential component to safeguard their firms against environmental and market volatility and adversatives. The firms in developing nations should further strengthen their social dimension of ESG to foster social equity and harmony.

The study contributes through its niche investigations on the energy sector, which is very important for the world economy. The study is relevant in the current scenario when the world faces a severe energy crisis due to global supply chain issues.

A key feature of human rights in health is access to safe, effective and affordable medicines. Pharmacovigilance is advocated for monitoring intended/unintended effects of medicines to assure their safety. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize knowledge about supply chain impediments to safe medicines in developing nations and contribute to future development of research in this field.

This paper conducts a structured literature review based on Preferred Reporting Items for the Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. It aims at profiling supply chain impediments to safe medicines in developing nations by reviewing 46 recent pharmacovigilance-specific papers published between 2005 and 2020.

Analysis of reviewed articles identified criticality of supply chain impediments that affect constituents across pharmaceutical in developing nations, which still struggle to maintain robust national pharmacovigilance systems due to lack of awareness, policy and practices.

Research results can be applied by pharmaceutical industry decision-makers and drug safety professionals in developing nations. Because the review is qualitative in nature, its implication ought to be tested after actual implementation.

This review can help identify underinvestigated impediments and methods to aid in developing new pharmacovigilance knowledge areas in developing nation context.

The review uncovers gaps in global health equity dialogue in developing nations. It also recognizes that macrolevel supply chain impediments exist due to unfair disease burden and health inequities in developing nations.

The paper examines supply chain impediments to safe medicines in developing nations with insights for future pharmacovigilance research. Identifying and classifying supply chain impediments through this review is the first step toward creating effective interventions for these impediments to safe medicines.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, African students studying tourism and hospitality internationally had diverse experiences in their professional endeavours. This study seeks to examine the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the career progression and perspectives of African undergraduate students specialising in higher education in the fields of tourism and hospitality.

The study utilised qualitative content analysis, which involves subjectively interpreting text data by systematically categorising and coding it to identify themes or patterns.

The findings deviate from how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the career advancement of African international students studying tourism and hospitality in North Cyprus. Consequently, most developing nations face an increased need for security measures. Tourists will pay higher prices to visit highly secure areas rather than risking their lives. This is one of the reasons why many students from developing nations choose to pursue their careers in developed countries.

It is imperative for the governments of developing nations to make substantial financial contributions to the development of their respective tourism sectors. Augmented investment has the potential to allure international tourists, thereby generating employment prospects for the host economies. The lack of investment forces young individuals to pursue their education overseas. Furthermore, it is imperative for developing nations to enhance their security infrastructure.

Our findings suggest that policymakers should establish a diverse management team that includes student employees to develop suitable strategies for industry management. Insufficient student inclusivity can result in a lack of dedication, whereas involving them in management strategies can contribute to the industry’s prosperity.

The findings obtained from this research can stimulate the formulation of strategies within the tourism industry to tackle the intersection of career obstacles.

This paper aims to conduct a systematic literature review on the fintech services and financial inclusion of the developing nations that particularly focuses on lower middle-income group nations (LMIGN) and upper middle-income group nations (UMIGN) to highlight the research areas that have not received attention and present opportunities for future research.

This paper adopts a systematic approach to examine 65 research articles published from 2016 to 2021, adhering to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines.

The study identifies research gaps in two key themes: backward and outward linkages. In backward linkages, the literature on UMIGN should pay attention to the behavioural patterns associated with lending, investment and market provision-related fintech services. Further research is needed to understand the relationship between fintech services on the usage and quality dimension of financial inclusion in both LMIGN and UMIGN. For outward linkages, future research work should explore the role of fintech and financial inclusion in the development of LMIGN. This study provides valuable insights and guides future research directions by comprehensively mapping the existing studies.

This study does not use quantitative tools, such as meta and bibliometric analysis, to validate the findings.

This research paper offers new perspectives that introduce a novel framework for analysing literature on fintech, financial inclusion and its impact on the overall development of UMIGN and LMIGN.

Due to their limited capacity for adaptation and dependence on natural resources for economic growth, developing countries (DCs) tend to be more prone to climate change. It is argued that climate finance (CF) is a significant financial innovation to mitigate the negative effects of climate variation. However, the heterogeneous impacts of CF on environmental sustainability (ES) and social welfare (SW) have been masked. Thus, this study aims to investigate the heterogeneous effects of CF on ES and SW in 80 CF receipt DCs from 2002 to 2018. This study also aims to investigate the effects of CF on ES and SW based on population size, income heterogeneity and the type of CF.

The method of moments quantile regression (MMQR) with fixed effects is utilized. Alternatively, the fully modified least square (FMOLS) and dynamic least square (DOLS) estimators are used for the robustness test.

The findings revealed that DCs with the lowest and middle quantiles of EF, carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and human development exhibit large beneficial impacts of CF on ES and SW. In contrast, the positive effects of CF on ES breakdown for countries with the largest distributions of EF and CO₂ emissions. Besides, the impacts of CF on ES and SW depend on income heterogeneity, population size and the type of CF.

This study calls for a framework to integrate CF into all economic development decisions to strengthen climate-resilient SW and ES in DCs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the effects of CF on ES and SW in a wide range of DCs. Thus, it complements existing related literature focusing on the effects of CF on ES and SW.

This study examines the nexus of bond market development and economic growth from 2015 to 2022.

The system-generalized method of moments (GMM) is employed on economic growth, government market capitalization, corporate market capitalization, bond yield, interest rate spread, trade openness and investment level.

The findings show that the government bond market, corporate bond capitalization and bond yield positively impact the gross domestic product (GDP). The results equally reveal a causal link between the corporate bond market, bond yield and GDP.

Governments should emphasize creating, developing and sustaining bond markets in the economies of developing countries to boost economic activity by promoting structural transformation. Policymakers should improve the implementation of existing rules and regulations while complementing them with new ones since well-developed bond markets provide alternative sources of financing that make economies financially resilient. Policymakers should encourage the issuance of corporate bonds to enhance the efficiency of the capital markets and mobilize funds for economic growth stimulation. Governments and corporations should diversify their sources of funding into the bond markets since the bond yields are favorable to economic growth.

Earlier studies presented arguable results on the bond market development and economic growth nexus. Several findings indicate a positive link; others give a negative link between bond market development and economic growth. Some show causal directions, while other reveal none. The contradictory results motivate research. This research results contribute to the literature in that the government bond market, corporate bond capitalization and bond yield positively impact the GDP of developing nations.

This paper examines the effect of bond market development on economic growth of selected developing countries from 1990 to 2020. Previous studies provide inconsistent results on the effect of bond market development on economic growth. Some results reveal positive effects while others show negative effects of bond market development on economic growth. These conflicting findings have motivated research.

The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) and co-integration methods are used for analysis. The gross domestic product per capita proxies economic growth while government bond capitalisation and corporate bond capitalisation measure bond market development.

The findings unveil a long-term effect within the series. The results disclose that government bond capitalisation, trade openness and inflation positively affect economic growth while corporate bond capitalisation and domestic credit to the private sector presents negative effects on economic growth.

The results propose that the governments should issue more bonds to raise funds for long-term economic growth initiatives. The governments should promote bond market development such that the corporate bonds issued boost economic growth by limiting lengthy documentations and bottlenecks in the bond market listing and issue procedures. The policymakers and regulatory authorities should implement policies which attract investors and encourage companies' listing in the countries' bond markets.

The study’s findings add value that government bond capitalisation positively impacts economic growth, while corporate bond capitalisation negatively affects economic growth in developing countries.

There is a dearth of research that investigates the impact of national culture on budgeting and management indexes in the public sector across developing countries. Limited studies in accounting and management have explained the role of national culture in shaping organisational and individual values. It is posited that national cultural variables impact budget transparency and performance management. This study contributes to the literature by examining these relations in 16 developing countries.

Adopting an unbalanced timing framework, the current paper seeks to fulfill this gap and applies four cultural dimensions from the GLOBE study (House et al., 2004) as explanatory variables to investigate whether national culture is associated with budget transparency and performance management or not, particularly in the context of developing countries. The paper uses budget transparency as the first dependent variable, based on the OECD database from Qi and Mensah (2011), along with performance management as the second dependent variable, from the BTI Project (2016), according to the leadership's political performance management.

Generally, the empirical findings reveal a minimal relation among GLOBE cultural variables with budget transparency and performance management. Particularly, the empirical findings indicate that only performance orientation has a significant relation with budget transparency and performance management.

The findings of this paper suggest that any plan to improve a nation's budget transparency should consider the links between budgeting, performance management and the culture of those that run them.

The formal adoption of new methods by performance management may not be enough without accompanying efforts to transform performance orientation as an index of national culture.

Growing food insecurity is a leading cause of fatalities, particularly in developing nations like Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. However, the rising energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are mostly associated with food production. Balancing the trade-offs between energy intensity and food security remains a top priority for environmentalists. Despite the critical role of the environment in food security, there is a scarcity of substantial studies that explore the statistical connections among food security, CO2 emissions, energy intensity, foreign direct investment (FDI) and per capita income. Therefore, this study aims to provide more precise and consistent estimates of per capita CO2 emissions by considering the interplay of food security and energy intensity within the context of emerging economies.

To examine the long-term relationships between CO2 emissions, food security, energy efficiency, FDI and economic development in emerging economies, this study employs correlated panel-corrected standard error, regression with Newey–West standard error and regression with Driscoll–Kraay standard error models (XTSCC). The analysis utilizes data spanning from 1980 to 2018 and encompasses 32 emerging economies.

The study reveals that increasing food security in a developing economy has a substantial positive impact on both CO2 emissions and energy intensity. Each model, on average, demonstrates that a 1 percent improvement in food security results in a 32% increase in CO2 levels. Moreover, the data align with the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) theory, as it indicates a positive correlation between gross domestic product (GDP) in developing nations and CO2 emissions. Finally, all experiments consistently demonstrate a robust correlation between the Food Security Index (FSI), energy intensity level (EIL) and exchange rate (EXR) in developing markets and CO2 emissions. This suggests that these factors significantly contribute to environmental performance in these countries.

This study introduces novelty by employing diverse techniques to uncover the mixed findings regarding the relationship between CO2 emissions and economic expansion. Additionally, it integrates energy intensity and food security into a new model. Moreover, the study contributes to the literature by advocating for a sustainable development goal (SDG)-oriented policy framework that considers all variables influencing economic growth.

This paper aims to evaluate the construction supply chain (CSC) by examining its relationships with various key areas and its development, identifying gaps and outlining potential future research directions that affect the implementation of CSC standards during the timeframe of the United Nations’ “Decade of Action” plans in the past two decades.

This paper reports on a systematic literature review with bibliometric analysis that investigates publications from around the world on various aspects of CSC. These aspects include research methodology/data collection technique, inquiry mode, country-specific research, focused areas of study, the research aims and publication periods.

The findings of the study reveal that information technology, information sharing, collaboration, performance measurement and CSC configuration have received considerable attention and analysis. However, financial management, supply chain resilience, logistics, vendor managed inventory and rural CSC have been identified as significant areas that require further investigation since limited attention has been given to them in the existing literature.

CSC is a very dominant topic in the current study, but there are some limitations to it. Scopus and Web of Science databases were used to conduct the study. A future study can therefore consider papers related to other databases. As the focus was specifically dedicated to construction material SC only, the papers associated with SCs of labours and equipment have been eradicated.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first structured and systematic literature review that identifies the issues related to the CSC during the timeframe of the United Nations’ “Decade of Action” plans and proposes future research directions to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of CSC.