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This paper aims to consolidate empirical studies between 2013 and 2022 to investigate the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education. It aims to examine published research characteristics and provide insights into the promises and challenges of AI integration in academia.

A systematic literature review was conducted, encompassing 44 empirical studies published as peer-reviewed journal papers. The review focused on identifying trends, categorizing research types and analysing the evidence-based applications of AI in higher education.

The review indicates a recent surge in publications concerning AI in higher education. However, a significant proportion of these publications primarily propose theoretical and conceptual AI interventions. Areas with empirical evidence supporting AI applications in academia are delineated.

The prevalence of theoretical proposals may limit generalizability. Further research is encouraged to validate and expand upon the identified empirical applications of AI in higher education.

This review outlines imperative implications for future research and the implementation of evidence-based AI interventions in higher education, facilitating informed decision-making for academia and stakeholders.

This paper contributes a comprehensive synthesis of empirical studies, highlighting the evolving landscape of AI integration in higher education and emphasizing the need for evidence-based approaches.

This study aims to explore the empirical relationship between public–private investment (PPI) in energy and environmental quality.

The authors hypothesize that PPI can reduce pollution emissions and test this hypothesis by sampling the 20-year data of emerging and growth-leading economies (EAGLE) and adopting two estimation techniques named panel estimated generalized least square and fully modified ordinary least square models.

The empirical analysis vows that PPI has an inverse relationship with CO₂ emissions, corroborating the sustainable development driving role of PPI. In addition, the empirical outcomes suggest a negative/positive role of energy imports and economic growth. Meanwhile, foreign direct investment is negatively linked with CO₂ emissions, corroborating the pollution halo hypothesis in the case of EAGLE. However, financial development shows a positive relationship with CO₂ emissions.

This study offers an important policy outlay regarding the pollution mitigation role of PPI in EAGLE. The environmental sustainability in underlying economies can be achieved by enhancing the magnitude of public–private cooperation in energy investment. The empirical analysis supplements cutting-edge empirical evidence regarding PPI as a driver of important sustainable development goal (SDG), i.e. environmental sustainability.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first study that examines how one can achieve an important SDG regarding environmental sustainability through PPI in energy.

This paper aims to examine whether reconciling profit maximization and social welfare as two possible aspirations of company is feasible.

The possible corporate goals are presented by drawing an arc from purely profit-maximizing organizations via a combination of profit and social objectives to organizations clearly serving social utility. In addition to this sorting principle, the order of the different positions presented also takes into account the number of goals and goal-setters.

The primary finding of the study is that none of the business concepts discussed here met the initial expectations as for economic and social objectives. The study points to the need to redefine the purpose of business within a broader social science framework.

For a critical perspective, this paper considers only those standpoints that emphasize a certain form of social utility beyond profitability resulting from business activity directly or indirectly.

In addition to revealing the relationship between the two aspirations, the novelty of the paper lies in the attempt to explore through normative critique and empirical evidence the validity of the expectations regarding the goals.

Sustainability is essential to the ongoing operations of banks, though it is much less clear how Islamic corporate governance (ICG) promotes economic sustainability (ES) and thereby prevents bankruptcy. To explore the unexplored, this study aims to examine the efficacy of ICG in preventing bankruptcy and enhancing the ES of Islamic banks operating in Pakistan.

The current study measures ES through Altman's Z-score to analyze the level of the industry's stability and consequently examines the effect of ICG on the ES of Islamic banks in Pakistan for the post-financial-crises period. Using the country-level data, this study utilized a fixed-effect model and two-stage least squares (2SLS) techniques on balanced panel data spanning from 2009 to 2020 to provide empirical evidence.

The empirical results unveiled that board size and meetings have a significant positive influence on the ES while managerial ownership demonstrated an unfavorable effect on ES. Interestingly, the insignificant effect of women directors became significant with the inclusion of controlled variables. Overall, the findings indicate that ICG is an efficient tool for promoting ES in Islamic banks and preventing them from the negative effects of emerging crises.

The findings provide concrete insights for policymakers, regulators and other concerned stakeholders to execute a sturdy corporate governance system that not only oversees the economic, social and ethical aspects but also provides measures to alleviate the impacts of potential risks like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Examining the role of ICG in alleviating bankruptcy risk is an informative and useful endeavor for all social actors.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first efforts to provide evidence-based insights on the role of ICG in preventing bankruptcy and offers a potential research direction for ES.

This paper investigates the effect of political uncertainty on the decision to cross-list in the United States (US).

To reach our paper aim, we use a sample of 589 non-US firms cross-listed in the US for the period from 2000 to 2019. We perform logit regression and use several political uncertainty proxies, including US election presidential years, political voting margin and the political uncertainty index from Baker et al. (2002), as a continuous measure of general political condition (Francis et al., 2021).

We find the following results. Non-US firms are less likely to cross-list their shares when US political uncertainty is high. We also find that the decision to cross-list is driven by price informativeness as a channel that can explain the role of political uncertainty. Our results are robust to the endogeneity concern. In addition, we find that political administration (Democrats vs Republicans) significantly affects the decision to cross-list. More particularly, we show that firms are more likely to cross-list their shares in the US when Democrats win the elections. Moreover, we find that cross-listed firms exhibit lower valuation compared to their non-cross-listed peers when US political uncertainty is high.

Using a unified framework of non-US firms cross-listed in the US, this paper contributes to different strands of the literature. Our first main contribution adds to the literature on cross-listing by providing, in our knowledge, the first evidence regarding the relation between cross-listing and political uncertainty. We add to the existing literature by showing that US political uncertainty significantly determines the decision to cross-list and value creation for cross-listed firms. Whether and how managers alter their strategic decision behavior in such settings is less clear. Hence, our paper contributes to the literature by documenting how political uncertainty impacts cross-listing decision and shapes management guidance decisions. Second, this study joins a growing body of literature that examines the real impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on economic outcomes. We provide empirical evidence suggesting that cross-listed firms exhibit lower valuation during period of high political uncertainty due to decreased price informativeness.

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.

The purpose of this study was to examine the moderating role of institutional ownership on the relationship between board gender diversity and earnings management (EM) among listed firms in East African Community (EAC) partner states.

The study used a sample of 71 firms listed in the EAC partner states over 2011–2020. Data were handpicked from the individual firm's audited annual financial reports. Based on the results of the Hausman test, the study used the results of the fixed-effect regression model to test the hypotheses. To test the robustness of the results, the study employed an alternative measure of EM and two additional econometric techniques, including the pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) and the system generalized method of moments (GMM).

The empirical findings revealed that female directors improve the board's effectiveness in monitoring managerial roles. Specifically, the results showed a significantly negative relationship between the proportion of women in the corporate board and EM (as measured by discretionary accruals (DAs)). The findings further revealed an inverse relationship between the proportion of institutional ownership and EM. Finally, the results further demonstrated that institutional ownership enhances the role of board gender diversity in mitigating EM among listed firms in the EAC.

The findings of this study may be useful to managers, investors and regulators in assessing the role of institutional ownership and women's participation on corporate boards as a strategy for alleviating unethical manipulation of earnings.

The findings of this study contribute to the growing concern on gender inequality, especially the marginalization of women from the paid labor force and decision-making. The findings highlight the importance of having more women in the corporate board since this may help in mitigating corporate fraud. Similarly, the findings highlight the importance of institutional ownership as a corporate governance (CG) tool.

Previous studies have reported mixed empirical results on whether board gender diversity mitigates EM. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first paper to fill the existing gap by exploring whether institutional ownership moderates the relationship between board gender diversity and EM among listed firms in the EAC.

This paper is an attempt to re-examine the validity of the Twin Deficit Hypothesis in the Indian economy, which is characterised by mounting inequality and liquidity constraints. The authors augment the econometric analysis with two important mediating variables, exchange rate and trade openness, to analyse their impact on current account deficit.

The authors have used a ground-breaking asymmetric cointegration technique proposed by Shin et al. (2014) to investigate the short-run and long-run asymmetric nexus between gross fiscal deficit and current account deficit. In addition, the study has used asymmetric dynamic multipliers to see the dynamics of nonlinear adjustment from disequilibrium in the short run to equilibrium in the long run. The study has also used generalised impulse response functions to check the robustness of our cointegration results.

Using annual time series data from 1970 to 2018, the empirical exercise validates the presence of asymmetries in the Twin Deficit Hypothesis for the Indian economy. This study's robust findings demonstrate that the two deficits are asymmetrically related in the long run. The authors also found that exchange rate asymmetrically affects current account deficit thus validating the asymmetric J-curve phenomenon. From the causality analysis, the authors infer that there is a weak unidirectional causality running from fiscal deficit to current account deficit.

Fiscal deficit may cause current account deficit via changes in other macroeconomic variables that were not taken care of in this study. Therefore, the estimation techniques used in the present study might suffer from the issue of omitted-variable bias. Further research should include other macroeconomic variables where the twin deficit nexus is also influenced by other relevant variables. This will help in disentangling the indirect transmissions by which fiscal deficit translates into current account deficit.

The results from our econometric exercise strongly suggest that the twin deficits are asymmetrically related. From a policy perspective, the asymmetric twin deficit nexus offers strong policy implications for the development of policies that are flexible enough to respond to shifts in internal and external sector dynamics. While framing the mechanism of fiscal prudence, policymakers in emerging countries like India must take into account the regime-changing behaviour of twin deficits.

The present paper is a significant contribution to the existing body of literature by being the first study in India which has analysed the Twin Deficits phenomenon in a nonlinear framework with the incorporation of asymmetric exchange rate dynamics in the model.

This study examined the mediation-moderation role of innovation and market dynamism in the association between total quality management (TQM) practices and the performance of small and medium-scale enterprises' (SMEs') performance with empirical evidence from sub-Saharan Africa.

Using a questionnaire, the research model developed was tested with responses from 203 owners and managers of SMEs in Ghana. The analyses were done using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and Smart Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM).

The innovation initiatives partially and fully mediated the relationship between TQM practices and the performance of SMEs. Also, the indirect effect of TQM practices of SMEs on performance through innovation initiatives was negatively moderated by market dynamism.

The study contributes to the TQM literature by validating the indirect and direct relationship between TQM practices and performance in the context of SMEs in a developing region.

This paper presents a novel understanding of the relationship between TQM and SMEs in developing regions of the world. The paper serves as a guide for SME owners and managers to improve the performance of their organizations through TQM practices.

This paper is a response to the failure of construction firms to use sufficient attention to their working capital management (WCM) practices, resulting in operational challenges, and leading to the collapse of firms in most developing countries. Hence, this study aims to explore the empirical perspective of WCM practices among large building construction firms (LBCFs) in Ghana, to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 9.

The study collected primary data through structured survey questionnaires from LBCFs in Ghana. The CEOs/Directors, General Managers and Accountant/Finance of LBCFs in Ghana formed the unit of analysis based on a simple random sampling technique. Mean score, standard deviation and one-sample t-test were used to perform the empirical analysis of the study.

According to this study's empirical results, LBCFs appear to have effective WCM practices in place. This was evidenced in the surveyed responses which indicate that the sector’s WCM practices sound good based on the mean scores and statistically significant as the t-values > 1.664. Notably, LBCFs in Ghana pay their suppliers early to reduce the fear of adverse effect of late payments on their credit history, making them conservative in their approach toward financial management.

This is a pioneering paper in a developing country like Ghana, highlighting the significance of gaining an in-depth understanding of WCM practices among LBCFs. The findings of this study are expected to provide valuable information to industry players toward ensuring WCM efficiencies and can serve as a solid foundation for further empirical studies.