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Globalization occupies a central research activity and remains an increasingly controversial phenomenon in economics. This phenomenon corresponds to a subject that can be criticized through its impact on national economies. On the other hand, the world economy is evolving in a liberalized environment in which foreign direct investment plays a fundamental role in the economic development of each country. The advent of financial flows – FDI, remittances and official development assistance – can be a key factor in the development of the economy. The subject of this article is to analyses the effect of financial flows on economic growth in developing countries. Empirically, different approaches have been employed. As part of this work, an attempt was made to use a panel data approach. The results indicate ambiguous effects and confirm the results of previous work.

The authors seek to study the effect of foreign direct investment, remittances and official development assistance (ODA) and some control variables i.e. domestic credit, life expectancy, gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), inflation and three institutional factors on economic growth in developing countries by adopting the panel data methodology. Then, the authors will discuss empirical tests to assess the econometric relevance of the model specification before presenting the analysis of the results and their interpretations that lead to economic policy implications. As part of this work, the authors have rolled panel data for developing countries at an annual frequency during the period from 1990 to 2016. In a first stage of empirical analysis, the authors will carry out a technical study of the heterogeneity test of the individual fixed effects of the countries. This kind of analysis makes it possible to identify the problems retained in the specific choice of econometric modeling to be undertaken in the specificities of the panel data.

The empirical results validate the hypotheses put forward and indicate the evidence of an ambiguous effect of financial flows on economic growth. The empirical findings from this analysis suggest the use of economic-type solutions to resolve some of the shortcomings encountered in terms of unexpected effects. Governments in these countries should improve the business environment by establishing a framework that further encourages domestic and foreign investment.

In this article, the authors adopt the panel data to study the links between financial flows and economic growth. The authors considered four groups of countries by income.

This study aims to explore the link between mortality and climate change. The focus is in particular on individuals’ adaptation to temperature changes. The authors analyze the relationship between climatic change (measured by temperature rate) and mortality in 23 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries during 1970-2010.

This study performs the adaptation regression model in the level form as a dynamic panel fixed effects model. The authors use a non-linear threshold estimation approach to examine the extreme temperature changes effect on the temperature–mortality relation. More specifically, the study explores whether the large increases/decreases in temperature rates affect mortality rates more than the modest changes.

This study indicates that the temperature–mortality relation is significant in early part of the sample period (before 1990) but insignificant during the second part (after 1990). After including controlling factors, as well as nation and year fixed effects, the authors provide evidence that people do adapt to the most of the temperature-related mortalities. Also, this study provides evidence of the non-linear relationship between national temperatures and mortality rates. It is observed that only after 5 per cent increase in the annual temperature, the relation between temperature and overall mortality is significant.

Most studies cover only one specific country, hence making it difficult to generalize across countries. Therefore, the authors argue that the best estimation of the health effects of temperature change can be found by modeling the past relationships between temperature and mortality across countries for a relatively long period. To the authors’ knowledge, previous studies have not systemically tested the adaptation effect across countries.

This paper aims to appraise the effectiveness of gender quotas in breaking the glass ceiling for women on boards (WoBs) in companies that are legally obliged to comply with quotas (listed companies and state-owned companies, LP) and in those that are not (unlisted companies and nonstate-owned companies, NLNP). Furthermore, it investigates the glass cliff phenomenon, according to which women are more likely to be appointed to apical positions in underperforming companies.

A balanced panel data of the top 116 Italian companies by total assets, which are present in both 2010 and 2017, is used for estimating ANOVA tests across sectors and fixed-effects panel regression models.

WoBs significantly increased in both the LP and the NLNP companies, and this increase was greater in the financial sector. Furthermore, the relationship between the percentage of WoBs and firm performance is not linear but depends on the financial corporate health. Specifically, the situation in which a woman ascends to a leadership position in challenging circumstances where the risk of failure is high (glass cliff phenomenon) is only present in companies with the lowest performance in the sample, in other words, when negative values of Roe and negative or zero values of Roa occur together.

These findings have relevant policy implications that encourage the adoption of gender quotas even in specific top positions, such as CEO or president, as this could lead to a “double spillover effect” both vertically, that is, in other job positions, and horizontally, toward other companies not targeted by quotas. Practical interventions to support women in glass cliff positions, on the other hand, relate to the extent of supervisor mentoring and support to prevent women from leaving director roles and strengthen their chances for career advancement.

The authors explore the ability of gender quotas to break through the glass ceiling in companies that are not legally obliged to do so, and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, for the first time, the glass cliff phenomenon in the Italian context.

The study seeks to find the effect of financial leverage on the firm performance of non-financial companies listed in the Tokyo stock market.

The study collected data from 263 companies in the automobile and industrial producer sectors listed on the Tokyo stock exchange between 2001 and 2021. The generalized method of moments was used to estimate the effect of leverage on financial performance due to its ability to overcome the problems of endogeneity and autocorrelation.

The study found that the equity multiplier has a positive and statistically significant effect on return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE) and earning per share (EPS). The study discovered that the interest coverage ratio has a positive and statistically significant effect on ROA, ROE, EPS and Tobin’s Q. The results revealed that the degree of financial leverage and debt to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) have a negative and statistically significant effect on ROE, EPS and Tobin’s Q. The study also found that the capitalization ratios of the firms have a negative and statistically significant effect on ROA, ROE, EPS and Tobin’s Q.

The use of debt financing, which presents financial leverage, indicates that the companies can make enough earnings to pay off the interest and principal (debt service obligations), which were shown by the interest coverage ratio, as well as to pay all the long-term fixed expenses, which were shown by the fixed charge coverage ratio. Interest and fixed charge coverage have a positive statistically significant effect on the financial performance of automobile and industrial producer companies.

The study focused on the effect of financial leverage on financial performance by relying on pecking and trade-off theories to contribute to the existing body of literature in finance.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the effects of human resource management (HRM) practices on firm outcomes at the firm level in Vietnam.

The paper employs a fixed-effects framework for the estimation using a panel sample of manufacturing firms from small- and medium-sized enterprise surveys between 2009 and 2013.

The paper finds that, on average, a firm that provides the training for new workers gains roughly 13.7, 10 and 14.9 percent higher in output value per worker, value added per worker and gross profit per worker, respectively, than the counterpart. Moreover, an additional ten-day training duration for new employees on average leads to a 4.1 percent increase in output value per worker, a 3.0 percent rise in value added per worker and a 3.0 percent growth in gross profit per worker. The paper also uncovers that a marginal 10 percent of HRM spending results in about 2 and 1.6 percent rises in output value per worker and value added per worker, respectively.

Using the case of Vietnam, this paper shows the important roles of HRM practices in explaining firm outcomes.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between fiscal policy (tax revenues and government expenditure) and economic happiness. The panel data are used from 2012 to 2016 for 18 countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The study adopted the Barro (1990) model of endogeneity growth to characterize the relationship between fiscal policy and economic happiness. The study estimated the model by using the pooled ordinary least squares method, the fixed effects method and the random-effects method. In addition, the study used the dynamic estimate of this relationship rather than the conventional static estimate through the generalized method of moments’ method. This leads to overcoming the endogeneity problem between the dependent variable and the independent variables.

The main findings indicated that there is a negative and statistically significant relationship between nondistortionary taxes and economic happiness. Also, there is no relationship between public expenditure and economic happiness, whether productive or nonproductive. The results confirmed a positive and significant relationship between other revenues and economic happiness. The current study recommended the diversification of other public revenue sources to increase its contribution to public expenditure financing and the restructuring of the tax system, particularly nondistortionary taxes. These taxes must be replaced by other revenues or by distortionary taxes to increase economic happiness.

The research represents a strong starting base that can help researchers to conduct more studies on economic happiness by using different measures and comparing their results to find out the determinants of happiness. The relationship between economic happiness and fiscal policy with its different aspects requires more studies, especially the relationship between taxes and economic happiness in our region. The study of the relationship between public expenditure and economic happiness according to economic activities can guide decision-makers to direct the expenditure toward economic activities that achieve the happiness of their citizens. Enriching this study requires the availability of fiscal data for the entire MENA region for longer periods, which allow us to divide the countries of the region into petroleum and nonpetroleum countries, but the scarcity of data is one of the limitations of the study.

The governments of MENA countries should diversify other public revenue sources to increase the financing public expenditure by the expense of tax revenues, especially nondistortionary taxes, which would increase the economic happiness of their citizens.

This study is one of the rare studies that investigate the relationship between fiscal policy and economic happiness at the global level. This study contributed to filling the gap of this issue in the MENA region and enriching global literature through the experience of the MENA region. Moreover, this study investigated all aspects of fiscal policy, in contrast to other studies that focused on one of its aspects. The weakness in these studies is because of the lack of correlation between the sources of revenues and the face of their spending.

This paper aims to examine the effect of financial restatement on changing the auditor in the following years.

The study uses data of 105 companies (735 company-years) listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange collected during the period 2008-2014. Logistic regression is used to test the hypotheses.

The results of hypotheses present that restatement does not cause auditor changes and that as the severity of a restatement increases, the auditor change in the following year of restatement also does not increase. Restating companies having strong governance do not go for auditor changes as compared with other companies. In addition, in companies that are restating, non-big auditor changes are not more likely than a big auditor. Also, in companies restating simultaneous with a CEO turnover, there is no possibility of auditor change. Furthermore, multinomial logistic regression showed that the adjustments resulting from the correction of errors and changes in procedures and the amount of adjustments do not cause auditor change in the following year. So, the results have shown that the restatement is not an important factor in changing auditor the next year.

The current study analyses the impact of financial restatement on auditor changes in a deep manner in a developing country like Iran.

This study will examine the impact of cash dividends on the market value of banks listed in Middle East and North African (MENA) emerging countries during the period 2000–2015.

The current study adopts residual income approach based on Ohlson's (1995) valuation model. By testing different statistical techniques, fixed effect is applied on panel data for (144) banks listed on 11 MENA stock markets over the period 2000–2015. Furthermore, additional tests are applied to confirm the primary results.

The analysis reveals that current dividend payouts and dividend yield do not provide information relevant to the establishment of market values in MENA emerging markets; thus, they have no material impact on MENA banks' market values. This lack of current dividend payment effect is consistent with Miller and Modigliani (1961) dividend irrelevance assumption: there is no evidence of either an informational or real cash inflow effect of current dividend payments. The findings of this study can be attributed to the fact that MENA banks may be forced to place more emphasis on allocating money for investment instead of paying dividends given them they are subject to liquidity requirements for investment, expansion, general operations and compliance with regulations. Only after all these financial needs are covered can the remaining surplus be distributed as cash dividends. Therefore, cash dividends represent earnings residual rather than an active decision variable that impacts a firm's market value. This is consistent with the residual dividend hypothesis, which is the crux of Miller and Modigliani (1996) irrelevance theory of dividends.

The current study is restricted to a sample of one type of financial firms, banks, because of the problem of missing data and limited information related to other financial firms for the same period. Therefore, further research could be additional types of financial firms such as insurance firms that play a vital role in MENA emerging economies.

The results of this study have some important implications for banks' dividend policymakers. Dividend policymakers in MENA emerging markets seem to follow residual dividend policy, in which they distribute dividends according to what is left over after all acceptable investment opportunities have been undertaken. This makes for inconsistent and unstable dividend policy trends, making it difficult for investors to predict future dividend decisions. Further, this practice may deliver information to shareholders about a lack of positive future investment opportunities, and this may negatively affect the share value of banks.

This study is the first of its kind – up to the author's knowledge – that examines a large cross-country sample of MENA banks (144) to cover a long time period in the recent past, and, more importantly, after the banking sector in the region has experienced major transformations during last two decades. In addition, most of the MENA region countries included in this study, namely, banks, operate in tax-free environments (there are neither taxes on dividends nor on capital gains). This feature adds complexity to the ongoing dividend debate.

The economic and financial literature dealing with the subject of bank profitability has often been based in the measurement of banking results on three main indicators: ROA, ROE and MIN. This article aims to determine and analyze the different determinants that influence bank profitability and to identify the impact of these determinants on the profitability of Moroccan banks.

For this purpose, a fixed individual effect model was adopted for the case of six Moroccan banks during the period of study from 1997 to 2018. The authors carried out their estimates at three levels according to three categories of profitability factors: bank factors, factors of the banking system and macroeconomic factors.

The empirical findings show that Moroccan banks react on their size to boost their performance, which further explains the continued expansion of Moroccan banking networks. The authors confirm that Moroccan banks have not yet reached a level of size that will be detrimental to their performance. Therefore, the authors can conclude that the big Moroccan banks do not follow the concept of economy of scale. The effects of the variation in the level of economic growth as well as the evolution of the level of inflation on the performance of Moroccan banks are not significant.

The authors’ findings and results have some important originality and value. Primarily, these results would consist of better helping the State, bankers, and bank managers to better understand the various determinants of bank profitability. The results may also help to better examine the effect of each factor, whether internal or external, on banks' bottom line.

This paper aims to empirically investigate the factors attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows into emerging economies.

This study uses secondary data from the World Bank and the Global State of Democracy Indices of 16 West African countries (WACs) over the period from 1989 to 2018. Fixed- and random-effects econometric regression models are used to assess the nexus between 12 macroeconomic indicators (including political risk and cultural factors) and FDI inflows into WACs.

The critical drivers of FDI inflows into WACs are the richness of natural resources, market size or gross domestic product (GDP), imports and exports of goods and services, trade openness and the currency's strength as measured by the exchange rate. The result also reveals that French-speaking countries attract more FDI than other English-speaking countries. The previously cited determinants of FDI, such as infrastructural development, inflation, tax and political stability, are insignificant in determining FDI inflows into WACs.

This study uncovers the critical drivers explaining the FDI inflows into WACs, where FDI accounts for 39% of external finance. The study's contribution is that Francophone WACs attract more FDI than Anglophone WACs. The most important drivers of FDI are abundant natural resources, GDP, imports, exports, trade openness and exchange rate.