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The study examines socio-spatial appropriations in dwellings of Cairo, which were undertaken to expand dwellings affordances and accommodate new utilitarian demands during lockdown. The study questions whether those appropriations impacted dwellers' conceptions of dwellers' dwellings and scrutinizes how those appropriations could feedback the design of dwellings post-pandemic.

The research adopted a mixed-method approach and was constructed over two phases as follows: first, in-depth interviews with 20 participants to acquire qualitative data about the adopted appropriation strategies and the subsequent actualized affordances and second, an online quantitative survey answered by 133 respondents to quantify the frequency of the adopted appropriation strategies and test the relationship between appropriations and mental conceptions of dwellings.

The study identifies five main appropriation strategies undertaken by dwellers and builds upon them to recommend favorable design features of dwellings post-pandemic. Those are: securing unscripted spaces, reviving dormant spaces, space compartmentalization, temporal programing of space and space esthetic personalization. The study also affirms a relationship between undertaking appropriations and improved mental conceptions of dwellings. Finally, the study suggests recommendations for space use optimization which could be deployed in existing dwellings and could ultimately be considered for designing post-pandemic dwellings.

The originality of this study lies in the study's opportune documentation and analysis of such an exceptional condition. Thus far, very few studies have tackled socio-spatial practices in dwellings during lockdown, let alone the impact of the pandemic on the design of future dwellings.

This paper questions the change in patterns of use of the balcony during lockdown. It investigates whether residents, specifically of apartment buildings in Cairo, used their balconies more frequently or for different activities during the lockdown.

The study was conducted through a mixed methods approach. More specifically, a sequential explanatory design was adopted where quantitative data were collected at first followed by qualitative data collection. The study proceeded in two stages. First, an online questionnaire with 160 respondents was conducted to depict the change in the frequency and use patterns of balconies pre/post lockdown in Cairo. The respondents were approached through snowball sampling. Second, in-depth semi-structured interviews with 20 participants, approached through convenience sampling, were done. The interviews aimed to provide interpretation and rationale for the responses, patterns and correlations identified from the questionnaire results.

The findings of this study confirm that there is a change in the pattern of use of balconies in terms of frequency and the types of hosted activities. The analysis revealed three key ideas that characterize those changes: the balcony as a found space, as a loose space and as a space of self-expression at home. It also expands on spatial qualities of balconies that promoted their use. The study emphasizes the significance of such outdoor private spaces in apartment buildings and puts forward balconies as an essential element of future dwellings design for the multiple benefits they behold.

The originality of the study stems from tackling such a timely and unprecedented situation, where still few studies investigating the relationship between pandemic and the architecture of homes have been conducted. Furthermore, this study focuses particularly on exploring the use of balconies in Cairo, one of the largest cities in both Africa and the Middle East, during lockdown. Its findings might ultimately help formulate, define and characterize new trends in the architecture of homes that would embrace human needs in times of prosperity and rising tensions alike.

The risk-return relationship is one of the most widely investigated topics in finance, yet this relationship remains one of the most controversial topics. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the asymmetric volatility and the risk-return tradeoff at the sector level in the emerging stock market of Jordan.

Data consist of daily prices for 22 sub-sectors spanning from August 1, 2006, to September 30, 2015, covering the periods of pre, during, and after the global financial crisis. The EGARCH-M model is used to document the patterns of asymmetric volatility of sub-sector returns and the risk-return tradeoff during the non-overlapping three sub-sample periods.

The major findings of this study are as follows. In the pre-crisis period, the results suggest some evidence of a positive relationship between risk and return. The results also reveal that good news has more effect than bad news during the same period. In the crisis period, there is a negative but insignificant risk-return relationship and negative shocks have more impact than positive ones. In the post-crisis period, the authors find positive but insignificant risk-return tradeoff with weak evidence of volatility asymmetry.

The results have major implications for investors willing to engage their investment decisions in the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) and for policymakers who seek to attract and retain regional and international investors. Since the empirical investigation is conducted at the sector level, the study may aid investors to target specific sub-sectors with positive and significant risk-return tradeoff. In addition, investors need to monitor the asymmetric patterns which make the level of risk-aversion more susceptible to coming news. For policymakers, the latest infrastructure reforms are crucial to achieving the potential for growth but the ASE market authority needs to undergo further reforms and provide various promotional incentives.

Although there are numerous studies on asymmetric volatility and risk-return tradeoff, there is a lack of parallel studies at the sector level for both developed and emerging stock markets. Such assessment at the sector level is crucial for international investors after their choice of countries or markets for better choice of portfolio diversification and allocation of financial resources.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of politically connected directors (PCDs), media coverage and their interaction on firm performance in an emerging market economy (UAE).

This study relies on the agency theory and the resource dependency theory and uses a panel data set of a sample of non-financial firms listed in the UAE stock market from 2009 to 2016. Data were analyzed using fixed-effects regression. Instrumental variable regression was used to address potential endogeneity.

PCDs and media are positively associated with firm performance (ROE and Tobin’s q). Media moderates the PCDs–performance relationship, as the interaction between PCDs and media coverage is negatively associated with firm performance. Under growing media attention, reputational concerns prevent PCDs from using their connections to gain particular advantages to their firms to avoid damaging their image.

Regulators need to acknowledge and define the roles of PCDs and media in business governance.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is the first empirical examination testing the effect of the interplay between PCDs and media on firm performance in an emerging market economy such as UAE.

This study focuses on Egypt’s recent experience with exchange rate policies, examining the existence of spillover effects of exchange rate variations on stock prices across two different de facto regimes and whether these effects, if any, are asymmetric.

The empirical analysis is carried out using a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag modeling framework, which permits testing for the presence of short- and long-run asymmetries. Relevant local and global factors are also included in the analysis as control variables. The authors divide the entire sample into a soft peg period and a free float one.

Over the soft peg regime period, both positive and negative changes in EGP/USD exchange rates seem to have a significant impact on stock returns, whether in the short or long run. Short-term asymmetric effects vanish in the free float period, while long-term asymmetries continue to exist. By and large, the authors find that currency depreciation tends to exercise a stronger influence on stock returns than does currency appreciation.

The results offer important insights for investors, regulators and policymakers. With the domestic currency depreciation having a negative impact on stock prices, investors should contemplate implementing appropriate currency hedging strategies to abate depreciation risks and, hence, preserve their expected rate of return on the Egyptian pound-denominated investments. In the current post-flotation era, the government could pursue a flexible inflation targeting monetary policy framework, with a view to both lowering the soaring inflation toward an announced target rate and stabilizing economic growth. The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) could adopt indirect monetary policy instruments to secure tightened liquidity conditions. Besides, the CBE could raise policy rates to incentivize people to keep their money in local currency-denominated instruments, instead of dollarizing their savings, thereby relieving banks of foreign currency demand pressures. Nevertheless, while being beneficial to the country’s real economy on several aspects, such contractionary monetary measures may temporarily impinge on stock market performance. Accordingly, policymakers should consider precautionary measures that reduce the potential for price distortions and unnecessary volatility in the stock market.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study represents the first attempt to explore the potential impact of exchange rate changes under different regimes on Egypt’s stock market, thus contributing to the relevant research in this area.