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Environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues have become the cornerstone of investment decisions in firms today. With that, publicly traded ESG indices (like the BSE ESG 100 index in India) have come into existence. The existing literature signifies that ESG generates financial implications and induces stability. The current study aims to test whether the firms listed on the ESG index (ESG-sensitive firms) face less financial distress than those not listed on such an index.

The study applies panel data difference-in-differences (DID) regression by considering ESG as an unstaggered treatment to 74 non-financial firms listed on India's Bombay Stock Exchanges (BSE) 100 index. In total, 42 firms are ESG treated as they got listed on the BSE ESG 100 index, formed in 2017. The remaining 32 firms form the control group. The confidence intervals and standard errors are estimated using clustered robust errors and the Donald and Lang method.

Listing on the ESG index matters for financial stability; differences in financial distress are significant on financial distress. ESG-sensitive firms face less financial distress than non-ESG firms (or firms not perceived as ESG-sensitive). The results are consistent across two financial distress measures, Altman z-scores for emerged and emerging markets. Thus, the DID in distress status between ESG-sensitive and non-ESG firms matter.

The study creates vibrant implications for practitioners using ESG to reduce financial distress.

The study is one of its kind to test the treatment effects of ESG on firm value and quantify treatment effects on financial distress.

This study explores the link between ISO 9001 certification, personal data protection and firm performance using financial balance sheet and survey data. The security aspect of data protection is analyzed based on the major requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation and mapped to the relevant controls of the ISO/IEC 27001/27002 standards.

The research analysis is based on 96 ISO 9001–certified and non-certified publicly traded manufacturing and service firms that responded to a structured questionnaire. The authors develop and empirically test their theoretical model using the structural equation modeling technique and follow a difference-in-differences econometric modeling approach to estimate financial performance differences between certified and non-certified firms accounting for the level of data protection.

The estimates indicate three core dimensions in the areas of “policies, procedures and responsibilities,” “access control management” and “risk-reduction techniques” as desirable components in establishing the concept of data security. The estimates also suggest that the data protection level has significantly impacted the performance of certified firms relative to the non-certified. Controlling for the effect of industry-level factors reveals a positive relationship between data security and high-technological intensity.

The results imply that improving the level of compliance to data protection enhances the link between certification and firm performance.

This study fills a gap in the literature by empirically testing the influence of data protection on the relationship between quality certification and firm performance.

The objective of this study is to explore the impact of a government-supported initiative for operational security, specifically the establishment of the national security emergency industry demonstration base, on the profitability of local publicly traded companies. Additionally, the study investigates the significance of firms' blockchain strategies and technologies within this framework.

Using the differences-in-differences (DID) approach, this study evaluates the impact of China's national security emergency industry demonstration bases (2015–2022) on the profitability of local firms. Data from the China Research Data Service (CNRDS) platform and investor Q&As informed our analysis of firms' blockchain strategy and technology, underpinned by detailed data collection and a robust DID model.

Emergency industry demonstration bases have notably boosted enterprise profitability in both return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE). Companies adopting blockchain strategies and operational technology see a clear rise in profitability over non-blockchain peers. Additionally, the technical operation of blockchain presents a more pronounced advantage than at the strategic level.

We introduced a new perspective, emphasizing the enhancement of corporate operational safety and financial performance through the pathway of emergency industry policies, driven by the collaboration between government and businesses. Furthermore, we delved into the potential application value of blockchain strategies and technologies in enhancing operational security and the emergency industry.

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on the earnings management (EM)–corporate social responsibility (CSR) relationship as most of the previous studies have been carried out in non-turbulent periods. This study investigates whether CSR affects EM during the pandemic period by testing two hypotheses: the cognitive biases hypothesis and the resilience hypothesis

The difference-in-difference and triple difference approaches are used for a sample of 536 US firms (268 socially responsible firms and 268 matched non-socially responsible counterparts) during the 2017–2021 period. Socially responsible firms are selected from the MSCI KLD 400 Social Index, and matched firms are identified through the propensity score matching method.

The authors find an income-increasing practice for both socially responsible firms and control firms for the whole period and each sub-period. Moreover, socially responsible firms are more likely to manage their earnings (income increasing) than their counterpart. Furthermore, the authors show that CSR commitment exacerbated EM in line with the cognitive biases hypothesis.

This study is the first shed light on the dark side of CSR during pandemic periods.

This study explores the impacts of Covid-19 on the performance of firms operating in different industries, and further discovers suspected impacting channels through which Covid-19 is significantly associated with firm performance.

A dataset of 402 listed firms from 2017Q1 to 2021Q4 is proceeded with high dimensional fixed effect (firm-quarter fixed effects) models and difference-in-difference models supported by propensity score matching. A thorough robustness testing procedure with a falsification test with a hypothetical event is applied.

The study asserts that the pandemic has remarkably hurt the businesses in industries that are more vulnerable to the coronavirus and governmental response policies. Adding to the confirmation of sales and expense channels, new channels – competition and short-term receivables –through which the negative impact of the pandemic is passed on firms is also examined.

First, this study is to be the first comprehensively investigate and affirm the varying impact of Covid-19 on the business performance of listed firms from different industries in Vietnam, providing additional insight into this research field in Vietnam and emerging economies. Second, the authors examine possible channels paving the way for the impact of Covid-19 on firms' performance and especially explore new channels associated with competition and short receivables. Third, the findings help to form the recommendations for Vietnamese firms, and the study could be replicated for other emerging countries under other similar infectious diseases-driven crises.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-02-2023-0072

The purpose of this study is to estimate the impact of conflict witnessed in Pakistan on the enrolment rates of boys and girls. Pakistan has the world’s second-highest number of out-of-school children, with an estimated 22.8 million children aged 5–16 years not attending school.

By merging data on violence with the data on enrolment rates, this paper finds that exposure to violence is correlated with a decline in overall district-level enrolment rates in the short run at primary-level schools and middle-level schools.

However, for boys, violence is also negatively correlated with enrolment rates at middle-level schools in the medium run. One possible mechanism tested in this paper is the potential substitution of boys into the labour market during a period of conflict.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper adds to the existing literature in several ways. Firstly, the effect of conflict on the labour market by impacting schooling for boys and girls is examined for the first time in Pakistan. Secondly, the district-level data set on enrolment rates used for this study is novel and has not been used before for this type of analysis. Thirdly, while this study strengthens the evidence that the short run effects of conflict are stronger than the long-run effects, it also confirms the negative effects of conflict do not fade away immediately. Fourthly, this study emphasizes that each conflict is unique in terms of its heterogeneous effects across different cohorts, such as gender, as these effects are dependent on the mechanism through which conflict impacts each individual.

There is consensus among scholars on how political institutional imprinting interprets the unique management and practice phenomenon of Chinese enterprises. However, little scholarly attention has been given to the different political institutional imprints that shape firms’ internationalization. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how communist and market logic political institutional imprintings influence firms’ initial ownership strategies in outward foreign direct investment.

Based on the propensity score matching difference in difference method and a sample of 464 foreign investments from 2009 to 2020 for 310 Chinese private firms.

The results show that private firms with market logic political institutional imprintings tend to adopt higher ownership and vice versa. As institutional differences increase, private firms with market logic imprintings are more risk-taking and adopt higher ownership, whereas private firms with communist imprintings are more conservative and choose lower ownership. When diplomatic relations are friendlier, private firms with market logic imprintings prefer higher ownership to grasp business opportunities and vice versa.

This study not only identifies the net effect of political institutional imprinting on private firms’ initial ownership strategy but also investigates the different moderating effects of current institutional forces to respond to the call for research on bringing history back into international business research and the fit between imprinting and the environment.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between earnings quality and corporate cash holdings in an emerging economy. Existing literature posits that earnings quality is a result of information asymmetry and firms with lower earnings quality increases cash holdings, to shield the firm from future uncertainties. In this paper, the authors propose a ‘private benefits hypothesis’, which suggests that lower earnings quality is an indicator of opportunism and expropriation of resources in the firm, through tunneling or excessive executive compensations. As a result, firms with lower earnings quality increase cash holdings in their control, to increase their private benefits and to avoid the scrutiny of the external stakeholders. The authors further examine the monitoring role played by institutional investors on cash holdings, with varying degrees of earnings quality.

This study uses an unbalanced panel data sourced from Prowessdx, from 2000 to 2019. The analysis employs 20,231 firm-year observations from 2,421 firms. Earnings quality is calculated following Dechow and Dichev (2002).

Empirical analysis confirms that the firms with higher earnings quality reduce cash. Further, institutional investors reduce the cash holdings in firms with higher earnings quality. Institutional investors effectively reduce the cash only in firms with at least 10% of equity shareholding. The results are robust to alternative measures of earnings quality and endogeneity concerns.

This study diverges from the information asymmetry hypothesis in the existing literature on earnings quality and cash holdings and highlights the underlying private benefits hypothesis, that will impact cash holdings. Next, the 10% institutional shareholding is important in the Indian context as it represents the minimum threshold at which block holders can request extraordinary general meetings (Section 100 of the Companies Act 2013) or the involvement of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) (Section 213 of the Companies Act 2013). This study highlights that unlike in Anglo-Saxon economies, institutional investors or other minority shareholders are empowered by the Companies Act 2013 to play a vital role in corporate governance with a mere 10% equity.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on company innovation, specifically centering on the quantity and quality of innovation. The paper aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of whether the epidemic inhibits innovation and the role of digital transformation in mitigating this negative impact.

The paper uses a quasi-experimental study of the COVID-19 pandemic and constructs a differential model to analyze the relationship between the epidemic and firm innovation in three dimensions: total, quantity and quality. The paper also uses a difference-in-difference-in-differences model to test whether digital transformation of firms mitigates the negative impact of the epidemic and its mechanism of action.

The results show that COVID-19 significantly reduced the overall level of firm innovation, primarily in terms of quantity rather than quality. Furthermore, this study finds that digital transformation plays a pivotal role in mitigating the pandemic’s adverse impact on innovation. By addressing financing constraints and countering demand insufficiency, digital transformation acts as a catalyst for preserving and fostering innovation during and after the pandemic.

This study extends the current research on the pandemic’s impact on firm innovation at the micro level. It offers valuable insights into strategies for fostering digital transformation among Chinese enterprises in the post-pandemic era.

This study aims to clarify the impact of agriculture–tourism integration (ATI) on in situ urbanization (ISURB) of rural residents, to highlight the role of industrial integration in the process of China's ISURB and to provide industrial integration suggestions for promoting urbanization quality in Chinese counties.

By sorting out the panel data of China's 1868 counties, the evaluation index system of ISURB was constructed. Difference in difference (DID) and spatial Durbin-difference in difference (SDM-DID) model is used for estimate the relationship between ATI and ISURB.

First, ATI can improve ISURB by 11.4% higher than other regions. Second, theoretical analysis model of ATI on ISURB is constructed from four aspects of “drive–push–pull–block.” The results show that ATI can promote ISURB by increasing upgrading of rural industries, rural employment demand and income capacity, whereas ATI may inhibit ISURB by reducing farmland. Third, considering changes in institutional, hard and soft factors, rural collective economy, information infrastructure and digital finance all promote positive impact of ATI on ISURB. Fourth, ATI will produce spillover effects on ISURB in neighboring regions, which is more pronounced in the central and western regions.

This study lacks quantification of ATI, so future studies are encouraged to further quantify ATI at the county level.

This study has policy significance for constructing ATI demonstration counties and promoting ISURB in China's counties.

It is of great practical value to promote China's ISURB. By stimulating ATI, it can improve income and employment capacity of rural residents and stimulate ISURB of China.

This study enriches the theoretical and practical research on industrial integration behaviors during the process of ISURB.

1. Use county data to measure in situ urbanization (ISURB)

2. Agriculture–tourism integration (ATI) can increase ISURB

3. Constructs a “drive-push-pull-block” model to explain the influence mechanism

4. Use spatial Durbin-difference in difference (SDM-DID) models

5. Consider collective economy, rural information infrastructure and digital finance

Use county data to measure in situ urbanization (ISURB)

Agriculture–tourism integration (ATI) can increase ISURB

Constructs a “drive-push-pull-block” model to explain the influence mechanism

Use spatial Durbin-difference in difference (SDM-DID) models

Consider collective economy, rural information infrastructure and digital finance