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The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of foreign aid in the Western Balkans countries’ economic growth between 2009 and 2021.

This paper uses a panel data approach to examine the effects of foreign aid on economic growth in the region and incorporates a random-effects model to accommodate the unique cross-country variations and time-specific factors, as well as a pooled OLS and fixed-effects model for a comprehensive, comparative analysis.

The in-depth regression analysis shows that foreign aid has not had a significant impact on the economic growth of the region. Further evidence suggests that trade openness exhibited a significant positive correlation with economic growth, while gross capital formation, although positively associated, did not significantly impact it, indicating the complexity of its role in the region’s economies.

The analysis presented in this study has significant practical implications, particularly for policymakers in the Western Balkans. Given the region’s ambitions for European Union membership and the challenges of high unemployment and inflation, understanding the role of foreign aid is crucial.

This research provides a unique contribution to the field of development economics by examining foreign aid effectiveness within the context of a region often overlooked in the literature. The analysis also offers fresh insights into the complex dynamics of foreign aid and its implications for policy and development strategies.

Recent international business research finds that state-owned multinational enterprises (SOMNEs) invest relatively more in politically risky host countries than do privately-owned multinational enterprises (MNEs). This study aims to investigate theoretically and empirically whether state ownership mitigates the impact of host-country political risk on subsidiary economic risk.

The authors link theoretical arguments on state ownership to arguments from non-market strategy literature to outline mechanisms whereby state ownership can buffer subsidiaries from political risk, weakening the link between host-country political risk and earnings volatility in subsidiaries. Using a data set on Norwegian MNEs’ foreign subsidiaries across almost two decades, the authors test this prediction using both matching methods and panel regressions.

While standard panel regressions provide empirical support only for the infrastructure sector and for the highest political risk contexts, nearest-neighbour matching models – comparing only otherwise similar private- and SOMNE subsidiaries using the full sample – reveal more general support for the political risk mitigation hypothesis.

The study presents the first comprehensive analysis of whether state ownership can mitigate the effect of political risk on subsidiary economic risk.

This study examines the effect of external debt and domestic capital formation on economic development in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) economies.

Using the Dynamic Common Correlation Effects (DCCE) technique and the Driscoll and Kraay fixed-effect technique, this paper conducts a multidimensional assessment of external debt and domestic investment on economic development across a panel of 35 SSA countries from 1995 to 2018. The data utilized are sourced from the World Development Indicators (2021) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) database (2021).

The results reveal that domestic investment has a positive impact on economic development in SSA countries, consistent across all three dimensions of the human development index (income, education and life expectancy). However, external debt exhibits an adverse effect on economic development, consistently yielding negative outcomes for life expectancy, education and income.

Based on these findings, the authors recommend that SSA economies implement appropriate policies, such as reducing bureaucratic requirements and addressing corruption, to enhance domestic capital investment. Additionally, efforts should be directed toward channeling contracted debt into productive sectors like road construction and electricity provision.

This study is among the first to assess the impact of domestic investment and external debt on the three dimensions of human development outlined by the UNDP. Furthermore, it employs a robust econometric method that considers cross-sectional dependence (CD).

The objective of this study is to examine the long-run relationship between workers' remittances and economic growth in Sri Lanka using time series data spanning 1975–2021.

This study employed both exploratory data analysis (EDA) and inferential data analysis (IDA) tools. EDA includes the scatter plots, confidence ellipse with Kernel fit, whereas IDA covers unit root test, the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds technique, the Granger's causality test, and impulse response function (IRF) analysis.

EDA confirms that workers' remittances have a positive relationship with per-capita gross domestic product (GDP). All variables used in this study are I(1). This study is exhibited that workers' remittances have a positive long-run relationship with per-capita GDP. The estimated coefficient of the error correction term shows that the dependent variable moves towards the long-run equilibrium path. Workers' remittances have a short-run and long-run causal relationship with per-capita GDP. The IRF analysis indicates that a one standard deviation shock to workers' remittances has initially an immediate significant positive impact on economic growth.

This study provides insights into workers' remittances in economic growth in Sri Lanka. Further, the findings of this study also provide evidence that workers' remittances increase economic growth.

Using ARDL bounds test, Granger's Causality test and IRF analysis for examining the relationship between workers' remittances and economic growth are the originality of this study.

This study scrutinizes the impact of economic globalization on ecological footprint while endogenizing economic growth and energy consumption during 1990–2018 in India.

For time series analysis, the standard unit root test has been employed to unveil the integration order. Then, the cointegration was confirmed using autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) analysis. Further, the study executed the dynamic ARDL simulation model to estimate long-run and short-run results along with simulation and robotic prediction.

The cointegration analysis confirms the existence of a long-run association among variables. Further, economic globalization reduces the ecological footprint in the long-run. Similarly, energy consumption decreases the ecological footprint. In contrast, economic growth spurs the ecological footprint in India.

The present study makes valuable and original contributions to the literature by applying a multivariate ecological footprint function, assessing the impact of economic globalization on ecological footprint while considering economic growth and energy consumption in India.

This paper aims to examine the moderating effect of conflict of interest regulation (CIR) on the relationship between mandatory of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption and foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The study was conducted based on panel data from 15 MENA countries during the period 2008–2020. Collected data were analyzed by using the generalized method of moments estimation technique.

This study results show that both mandatory of IFRS adoption and CIR do not have a significant effect on FDI inflows in MENA region; however, their interaction has a positive and significant effect on FDI inflows. This implies that more development of CIR enhances the impact that mandatory of IFRS adoption has on FDI inflows.

This study results are very useful to policymakers and regulators in the MENA region. The mandatory of IFRS adoption on its own does not improve significantly FDI inflows. The MENA countries should look inwards into more developed CIR that would support IFRS adoption to attract more FDI.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first research study to investigate the moderating effect of CIR on the relationship between mandatory of IFRS adoption and FDI inflows. In addition, the empirical researches on the effect of mandatory of IFRS adoption as issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) on FDI inflows for MENA countries are almost absent.

This study assesses the relevance of foreign aid to the incidence of capital flight and unemployment in 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

The study is for the period 1996–2018, and the empirical evidence is based on interactive quantile regressions in order to assess the nexuses throughout the conditional distribution of the unemployment outcome variable.

From the findings, capital flight has a positive unconditional incidence on unemployment, while foreign aid dampens the underlying positive unconditional nexus. Moreover, in order for the positive incidence of capital flight to be completely dampened, foreign aid thresholds of 2.230 and 3.964 (% of GDP) are needed at the 10th and 25th quantiles, respectively, of the conditional distribution of unemployment. It follows that the relevance of foreign aid in crowding out the unfavourable incidence of capital flight on unemployment is significantly apparent only in the lowest quantiles or countries with below-median levels of unemployment. The policy implications are discussed.

The study complements the extant literature by assessing the importance of development assistance in how capital flight affects unemployment in sub-Saharan Africa.

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the extent to which female and male university students from low-income countries express different entrepreneurial intentions. Specifically, the study empirically tests whether the anticipated financial returns to entrepreneurship versus salaried employment, or the perceived barriers to entrepreneurship exert a stronger influence on the relationship between gender and entrepreneurial intentions.

To test the relationship of anticipated rewards versus barriers to entrepreneurship on gender and entrepreneurial intention, the study uses new data from a field survey in Sierra Leone and employs multiple mediation analyses.

The authors find that the relationship between gender and entrepreneurial intentions operates through the mediator of perceptions of the financial returns to entrepreneurship but not perceived barriers to entrepreneurship.

The authors study intent, not behavior, acknowledging that cognitive intent is a powerful predictor of later behavior. Implications for future research on entrepreneurship in the African context are discussed.

The results from this study can be applied to both pedagogic and business settings in the field of entrepreneurship, with concrete implications for policymakers.

Results suggest that the gender gap in entrepreneurial intentions (EI) for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)- and business-educated students in Sierra Leone is predominantly influenced by anticipated financial returns to occupational choices, as opposed to perceived barriers to entrepreneurship, a more frequently studied antecedent to EI.

The majority of MENA countries suffer low levels of human development, coupled with scarcity of funding resources, low level of governance, and poor institutional environment. Consequently, this research aims at detecting the impact of development finance resources and institutional quality on the human development in the MENA region, in order to examine if/why the MENA countries fail to efficiently exploit all the available financial inflows to promote human development and boost living standards.

This study tests the short- and long-run impact of six financing resources representing injections in the economy and four institutional quality variables on the human development index in the MENA region. It adopts co-integration analysis, vector error correction model, and Granger causality test on a sample of 13 MENA countries over the period 1996–2019.

This research finds that domestic credit to private sector and exports of goods and services do not have any significant added value for human development in the MENA region. In contrast, government expenditures and migrant remittances are found to be crucial in promoting human development in both the short- and long-run. FDI and ODA do enhance human development, but only in the short-run. In parallel, control of corruption, government effectiveness and regulation quality are essential boosters of human development in the MENA region, but with different importance, while political stability was found to be irrelevant.

To the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first study that examines the impact of financial inflows and institutional quality on the overall human development index in the MENA region. The contribution of this paper lies in unlocking for policymakers the potential impactful financing resources to serve national developmental plans, in an endeavour to catch up to the SDGs amid the additional challenges imposed by governance and institutional environment.

This study aims to investigate the impact of exchange rate volatility and the risk of expropriation on the decision to repatriate foreign earnings.

The current study uses secondary data for foreign subsidiaries of US multinational corporations (MNCs) in 40 countries from 2004 to 2016. We use the dynamic panel difference generalised method of moments (GMM) to estimate the dynamic earnings repatriation model.

The findings show that foreign subsidiaries of US MNCs in countries with volatile exchange rates tend to repatriate more earnings to the parent company. The findings also reveal that a greater risk of expropriation in the host country leads to the higher repatriation of foreign earnings to the parent company. The findings support the notion that MNCs use the earnings repatriation policy as a means of mitigating risks arising in the host country.

Practical implications for modern managers include shedding light on how financial managers can use earnings repatriation policy to mitigate exchange rate risk and the risk of expropriation in the host country. The findings also contain policy implications at the host country level that how exchange rate volatility and risk of expropriation can reduce foreign investment in the host country.

This study adds to the earnings repatriation literature by analysing the direct effect of exchange rate volatility on earnings repatriation decisions, as opposed to the impact of the exchange rate itself, as suggested by previous research. Hence, the findings broaden our understanding of the direct influence of exchange rate volatility on the decision to repatriate foreign earnings. The present study also examines the role of the risk of expropriation in determining earnings repatriation policy, which has received little attention in prior empirical studies.