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The purpose of this study is threefold: firstly, to compare Pakistani and French consumers’ perceptions of well-being; secondly, to investigate how consumers in both countries relate to food; and thirdly, to assess whether they associate food with well-being.

Thirty participants (15 French and 15 Pakistani) between the ages of 24 and 35 were interviewed, using convenience and snow bowling sampling. Data triangulation was performed by combining three qualitative techniques, word association, photo-elicitation-based interviewing and open-ended questions to explore consumer perceptions of well-being, food and food well-being.

The study’s findings suggest that well-being is a broad concept in which food is an ingredient. Food and well-being share common elements, and food well-being can be defined as an individual’s psychological, physical, social and societal relationship with food ascribed by affordability and food literacy.

Pleasure, sharing and respect emerged as dimensions of food well-being that can be applied to transfigure consumer behaviour and reduce over-consumption, food waste and hunger. The dimensions of well-being and food were explored for both countries to understand their cultural nuances and determine the influence of food on well-being. This comparative analysis will help researchers understand consumers’ preferences for food in various aspects from two regions. This study can potentially contribute to scale development in food and well-being, which can help researchers measure the effects of food and well-being in different sectors of the economy, particularly in health care. The most aspiring aspect of the current research is the insights unveiled during interactions with research participants, which will help develop consumer baseline feelings.

The banking industry has always been vulnerable to cyberattacks. In recent years, Pakistan’s banking sector experienced the most intense cyberattack in its over 70-year history. Due to these attacks, a large number of debit card accounts of major banks were negotiated. This study aims to examine the impact of cyberattack awareness and customers’ commitment levels after these cyberattacks.

The study integrated the commitment–trust theory framework for the relationship of trust and commitment to the usage of online banking services. The partial least square structural equation modeling is being used to explore the relationship between customer’s trust, which is an outcome of continuous usage, and customer perception of affirmative cybersecurity measures the bank.

The findings revealed that customer trust in online banking is positively associated with customer commitment, but customers’ cyberattack awareness negatively impacts customer trust and commitment to online banking.

The study highlights the importance of proactive communication, transparency and robust incident response that helps organizations establish themselves as trustworthy entities while prioritizing customer information and transaction protection.

The authors report on how cyberattacks on the banking sector influence the trust and commitment of the customers in the sector. The variable of cyberattack awareness used in this study is novel in online banking literature.

The demand for functional foods has been increasing tremendously throughout the globe and keeping in view the health beneficial properties of apricot fruit. The purpose of this study is to develop wheat flour based cookies enriched with apricot pulp powder in order to improve nutraceutical properties of cookies and dilution of gluten at the same time.

Cookies were prepared from wheat flour blended with apricot pulp powder at 0, 10, 15, 20 and 25% level and evaluated for proximate, functional, rheological, nutraceutical and sensory properties.

Fibre content of apricot powder-incorporated cookies (3.23%) was significantly (p < 0.05) higher at 25% level than control (1.64%). The water absorption and oil absorption capacities decreased significantly (p < 0.05) upon increasing level of apricot pulp powder. The ß-carotene content, antioxidant activity and total phenolic content increased significantly (p < 0.05) upon incorporation of apricot pulp powder. The thickness of cookies increased, however, diameter and spread ratio decreased with increase in the levels of apricot pulp powder. Lightness (L*) value decreased, while redness (a*) and yellowness (b*) increased when incorporated with apricot pulp powder. Cookies having 25% apricot pulp powder showed maximum hardness and overall acceptability.

To the best of our knowledge, the scientific literature on incorporation of apricot pulp powder in bakery products is scanty. As such the present research has a tremendous scope for the food industries to produce functional bakery products with antioxidant properties and diluted the gluten content at the same time.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between working capital financing and firm performance for a sample of 437 non-financial Indian companies. In addition, this study examines the impact of financial constraints on working capital financing–performance relationship.

The study is based on secondary financial data of 437 non-financial Indian companies obtained from Capitaline database, pertaining to a period of 10 years (2007–2016). This study employs two-step generalized method of moments techniques to arrive at results.

Results of the study confirm the inverted U-shape relationship between working capital financing and firm performance. In addition, the authors also found that the firms that are likely to be less financially constrained can finance greater proportion of working capital using short-term debt.

This study contributes to the scant existing literature by testing the impact of financial constraints on the relationship between working capital financing and firm performance, representing a typical emerging market in India.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between working capital management (WCM) and firm profitability for a sample of 437 non-financial Indian companies.

The study is based on secondary financial data obtained from Capitaline database, pertaining to a period of ten years. This study employs two-step generalized method of moments (GMM) techniques to arrive at results.

The results of the study confirm the inverted U-shape relationship between WCM and firm profitability. In addition, the authors also found that the firms should complete its CCC on an average by 63 days.

Unlike prior studies that found a linear relationship between WCM and firm profitability. This study provides newer evidence for an inverted U-shaped relation between investment in working capital and firm profitability in India. In addition, this study uses GMM to control the potential problems of endogeneity.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of risk sharing and non-risk sharing instruments on both the profitability of Islamic banks and the economic growth of the country. This study also aims to improve the profit and loss sharing-based asset growth of Islamic banks.

The data for this study are obtained from the annual reports of all Islamic banks from Bangladesh using Bank scope database and annual report for the period of 1983–2014. The research uses Autoregressive Distributive Lag approach.

The findings reveal that risk sharing instruments are positively related to profitability and the economic growth of the country. This study also finds that non-risk sharing instruments play a predominant role in the profitability of the Islamic bank but are negatively related to the economic growth of the country.

Banks and other financial institutions need to pay greater attention to systemic risk created by risk transfer and apply risk sharing methods of financing more vigorously than has hitherto been the case.

This study will also contribute to the literature as relatively few Islamic financial literatures deal with the relationship between equity financing and profitability which may make a strong contribution to the area of Islamic finance.

This paper aims to empirically examine the presence of a balance sheet channel (BSC) of monetary transmission mechanism (MTM) using firm-level panel data of Pakistan. It also explores the role of financial sector development (FSD) and firm age (FAge) in formulating the effect of monetary policy (MP) on the investment decisions of firms.

The authors applied the two-step system generalized method of moments (SYS-GMM) estimator proposed by Blundell and Bond (1998) to carry out the empirical analysis. The final sample of the study includes 450 nonfinancial firms listed at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PXS) during the period 1988–2021. The empirical framework of the study is based on the new classical model of investment. Different measures of MP are used to obtain the robust empirical evidence. To take into account the different dimensions of FSD, the index developed by Svirydzenka (2016) is utilized. To examine the moderating role of FSD and FAge, the interacted model is estimated, which enables the authors to estimate the MP effects at different percentiles of the moderating variables.

The study’s findings confirm the existence of BSC by revealing that MP instruments have negative, significant effects on firms’ investment decisions. These findings suggest that during periods of tight MP, firms significantly cut their investment expenditures. The results of the interacted model show that both FSD and FAge play an important role in lessening the adverse effects of MP on firms’ investment policy. Specifically, the calculated total effects suggest that the negative effect of MP on investment is considerably weaker at the higher percentiles of FSD and FAge.

The findings of the study have several important policy implications for different stakeholders. Specifically, the evidence suggests that the monetary authorities should keep in mind the adverse effects of MP while designing tight MP. The tight MP will have a negative effect on firm investment, which, in turn, will adversely affect firm growth and subsequently the growth rate and level of employment in the economy. Thus, during episodes of tight MP, the authorities should provide other facilities such as a friendly tax environment, better legal and regulatory framework, special credit arrangements, and provisions of loan guarantees. The findings of the moderating role suggest that the government may improve FSD to minify the adverse impacts of tight MP. Finally, the findings suggest that the government should design external financing-friendly policies to provide more opportunities to newly established firms to avoid tight MP’s effects.

The findings of the moderating role suggest that the government may improve FSD to minify the adverse impacts of tight MP. Finally, the findings suggest that the government should design external financing-friendly policies to provide more opportunities to newly established firms to avoid tight MP’s effects.

There are three significant contributions of the paper. Firstly, it provides empirical evidence on the existing of BSC of MTM using firm-level panel data spanning over 43 years for an emerging and small economy, namely Pakistan. Secondly, it examines the moderating role of FSD and FAge in formulating the effects of MP. Finally, it presents the total impact of MP at different percentiles of FSD and FAge, which definitely broadens the understanding of MTM through indirect channels.

This paper aims to empirically examine the long- and short-run relationship between macroeconomic indicators (exchange rates, interest rates, exports, imports, foreign reserves and the rate of inflation) and sovereign credit default swap (SCDS) spreads for Pakistan.

The authors apply the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model to explore the level relationship between the macroeconomic variables and SCDS spreads. The error correction model is estimated to examine the short-run effects of the underlying macroeconomic variables on SCDS spreads. Finally, the long-run estimates are obtained in the ARDL framework. The study uses monthly data covering the period January 2001-February 2015.

The results indicate that there is a significant long-run relationship between the macroeconomic indicators and SCDS spreads. The estimated long-run coefficients reveal that both the interest rate and foreign exchange reserves are significantly and negatively, whereas imports and the rate of inflation are positively related to SCDS spreads. Yet, the results suggest that the exchange rate and exports do not have any significant long-run impact on SCDS spreads. The findings regarding the short-run relationship indicate that the exchange rate, imports and the rate of inflation are positively, whereas the interest rate and exports are negatively related to SCDS spreads.

The results suggest that State Bank of Pakistan should design monetary and foreign exchange rate polices to minimize unwanted variations in the exchange rate to reduce SCDS spreads. The results also suggest that it is incumbent to Pakistan Government to improve the balance of payments to reduce SCDS spreads. The findings also suggest that the inflation targeting policy can also help in reducing SCDS spreads.

This is the first study to examine the empirical determinants of SCDS spreads for Pakistan. Second, it estimates the short- and long-run effects in the ARDL framework. Third, it considers both internal and external empirical determinants of SCDS spreads.

This paper aims to explore the impact of corruption (CP) on income inequality (IN) by considering the size of informal sector (IFS) at different levels of percentiles.

This paper uses a panel quantile regression approach for a sample of 50 developing countries. The study also applies panel co-integration (Kao residual co-integration test) in order to examine the long-run relationship between CP and IN.

This paper using a panel quantile regression approach shows that the high incidence of IFS in an economy marginalizes CP's positive effect because it works as a source of poor peoples' livelihood and skillful individuals. The spread of IFSs in the developing economies may raise earnings among groups and individuals who remain unemployed. Moreover, the results show that CP creates asymmetry in income distribution; fascinatingly, the asymmetric income distribution is high when CP is at higher percentiles.

Due to non-availability of IFS, we restrict our analysis up to 50 developing countries.

CP devastates the effectiveness of institutions over time. Therefore, the government should have to take bold steps to reduce CP in society. Another policy implication of this study is that the government should reduce CP to decrease IN in less developing countries. Moreover, to increase the net base, the authorities need to bring IFS under the umbrella of regulation to avoid inequality in society. In developing economies, a higher part of labor force is related to IFS; therefore, our findings suggest a dire need to reduce labor exploitation in IFS. The policymakers can reduce labor exploitation by reducing the size of IFS, which ultimately reduces IN.

On the basis of the authors’ findings, this paper further suggests that it is mandatory for government to reduce CP in order to reduce IN. Moreover, to reduce IN, one needs to reduce the size of IFS.

This study is unique as it is the first that examined the role of IFS in establishing the effect of CP on IN for developing countries at different percentiles.

The purpose of this study is to analyze hybrid nanofluid (MWCNTs+Ag+Kerosene oil) over a stretched cylinder. Flow analysis is carried out in presence of stagnation-point. Features of heat transport are examined via melting conditions.

Governed expression (partial differential equations) for flow and heat transfer are transmitted into ordinary differential equations (ODEs) via applying adequate transformations. For solutions development shooting method (bvp4c) is used on these non-linear coupled ODEs.

Comparative observation among hybrid nanofluid (MWCNTs+Ag+Kerosene oil), basefluid (kerosene oil) and nanofluid (MWCNTs+Kerosene oil) are performed. Influences of physical parameters on heat transfer rate, velocity, skinfriction coefficient and temperature are visualized graphically. Higher values nanoparticle volume fractions, curvature parameter, melting parameter and velocity ratio parameter lead to intensification in the velocity profile. The temperature of the fluid reduces with higher values nanoparticle volume fractions, curvature parameter and melting parameter. The surface friction coefficient is minimized via a higher melting parameter and velocity ratio parameter. Heat transmission rate intensifies with velocity ratio parameter, nanoparticle volume friction and curvature parameter while it reduces gradually with larger melting parameter. During comparative study performance of hybrid nanomaterial (MWCNTs+Ag+Kerosene oil) is outstanding and is proceeded by nanomaterial (MWCNTs+ Kerosene oil) and basefluid (kerosene oil).

In the presented study authors have analyzed the flow of hybrid nanomaterial (MWCNTs+Ag+Kerosene oil) by a stretching cylinder. The further cylinder is subjected to stagnation point and melting condition. The authors believe that all the consequences of the presented study and numerical technique (bvp4c) are original and not published before.