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The study evaluates small marginal farmers’ (SMFs) potential behavior, attitude and trust in the adoption of innovative emerging technologies.

The study employed an agile multi-factor approach to conceptualize a digital marketplace to connect a supply chain ecosystem for stakeholders.

The empirical findings suggest that most SMFs are willing to embrace innovative technologies. Nonetheless, they lack the necessary technological oriented education, training and funds to innovate. However, their reluctance to adapt changes is attributable to their fear of losing past customs and practices; they were threatened by the reaction of intermediaries (arthyias) to the adoption of technologies, which could result in them suffering huge losses.

This innovative disintermediation business model has a significant potential to reduce information asymmetry, cost and hoarding – and can thus increase the SMFs’ profit margins. Agricultural technological innovations have a profound potential to impact their supply chain logistics positively by reducing the wastage of perishable food and thus enhancing the consumer experience.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of firm environmental, social and governance (ESG) rating scores on market perception and stock behavior from 2017 to 2021 while controlling for COVID-19 severity score.

The authors used panel regression models with robust standard errors based on cross-country and cross-industry sample of 1,324 ESG firms from 25 emerging countries across four regions. Four separate regression analyses are used. Hausman test is used to determine whether fixed-effect (FE) or random-effect approaches should be used in regression models. Lagrange multiplier test is used to test for time FEs, and F-test for individual effects to choose between pooled ordinary least squares model and FE. Two-unit root tests are conducted to check stationarity. Heteroskedasticity and serial correlation were controlled through a robust covariance matrix estimation.

The authors provide evidence that the stakeholder theory persists in emerging countries. Overall, the results suggest that firms’ stock behavior is positively associated with the level of environmental and social performance in the region. However, the results do not provide empirical evidence to support the link between ESG performance and stock market perception proxied by the price-to-sales ratio. The results suggest that Refinitiv and Bloomberg ESG rating scores have a positive impact on stock performance in emerging markets, albeit the Bloomberg rating score is insignificant.

Favorable impact of environmental and social performance on stock performance suggests that policymakers should take initiatives to raise awareness toward investments in ESG projects. Evidence shows that ESG stock performance in emerging markets does not insulate firms from the COVID-19 severity. Furthermore, this study highlights the inconsistency in calculating the ESG ratings, therefore, a more standardized approach is recommended to support investors seeking sustainable investments.

The findings have social implications for investors with proenvironmental preferences and nonpecuniary motives for ethical investments. Asset fund managers should develop ESG investment strategies to promote investor preferences that are linked to the proenvironmental and prosocial attitudes by increasing their investments in stocks of firms that behave ethically and support the environment. Furthermore, the findings show that investors pay a price for ethical and socially responsible investments as they are evaluating the environmental and social activities, hence, the firm ESG profile influences equity valuation and risk assessment.

The study extends the literature and provides evidence from the unique setting of emerging markets by analyzing the relationship between ESG rating scores and the COVID-19 severity scores on one hand, and stock behavior and market perception on the other.

This study aims to examine the impact of employee treatment on stock price crash risk in emerging markets. The study further sheds light on the economic channels and boundary conditions between employee treatment and crash risk.

This study employs a large-scale archival dataset of Chinese A-share listed firms covering 2010 to 2021. To establish causality, the study leverages multi-way fixed effects, Oster’s test, change regression and instrumental variable methods to alleviate endogeneity concerns.

The results reveal that employee-friendly treatment leads to a lower crash risk. Moreover, improving internal control quality and enhancing firm reputation appear to be the two plausible economic channels through which employee treatment mitigates crash risk. Cross-sectionally, the documented impact is more evident for human-capital-intensive firms, firms with weaker external monitoring and those operating in fiercely competitive industries.

This study is among the first to show that employee treatment has a favorable consequence for shareholder benefit through reducing crash risk. The study thus adds to the ongoing debate regarding the relationship between employee treatment and shareholder wealth. The study also extends the nascent literature on the role of rank-and-file employees in shaping corporate information landscapes.

This study aims to investigate the market reaction in the real estate market to the announcement of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

This study uses the event study method to assess the market reaction to the announcement that Russia is invading Ukraine. The sample in this study comprises 2,325 companies in the real estate market. We also conduct a cross-sectional analysis to determine the influence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members and company characteristics on market reactions during the invasion.

The global market reacts significantly negative toward Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This indicates that the war poses a high geopolitical risk that prompts financial markets down. The authors also demonstrate that emerging and frontier markets react significantly negative to the invasion before and after its announcement. Meanwhile, developed markets tend to react only before the invasion is announced. Furthermore, we find that the NATO members react more strongly than other markets.

This result implies that war prompts investors to flee from the stock exchange, while the deeper the country’s involvement, the more investors worry about the risks.

This study is the first to discuss the market reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukrainian, specifically in the real estate market.

Over the past two decades, the topics of Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) have attracted an increasing amount of interest, reflecting a growing sensitivity of investors and corporations towards environmental, social and governance issues.

This survey offers an overview of the academic literature on ESG/CSR through the lens of investors, institutions and firms. We first discuss the definitions of ESG and CSR and their relationship to each other.

We next describe how ESG is measured and note problems with the measurement of and quality of ESG data and discrepancies between different measures of ESG. We then turn our attention to investors, examining what types of investors invest in ESG and the role of institutional investors in ESG. From the firm's perspective, we discuss why firms themselves conduct ESG. We also summarize the literature on the impact of ESG on firms: how ESG affects firms' financing, disclosure and reporting activities and firm performance. Finally, we describe other consequences of the focus of ESG and CSR on firms and investors.

This survey offers an overview of the academic literature on ESG/CSR through the lens of investors, institutions and firms.

Sustainable investments (SI) represent a promising class of investments, combining financial returns with mitigating environmental challenges, achieving SDG goals and creating a positive business impact. An enhanced global focus on climate change developments in the backdrop of COP26 and COP27, raised the need for comprehensive literature mapping, to understand the emerging themes and future research arenas in this field.

The authors apply a quali–quantitative approach of bibliometric methods coupled with content analysis, to review 1,022 articles obtained from the Web of Science (WoS) database for 1991–2023.

The results identify the leading authors and their collaborations, impactful journals and pioneering articles in sustainable investment literature. The authors also indicate seven major themes of SI to be financial performance; fiduciary duty; CSR; construction of ESG-based portfolios; sustainability assessment tools and mechanisms; investor behavior; and impact investing. Further, content analysis of literature from 2020 to 2023 highlights emerging research issues to be SDG financing via green bonds and social impact bonds; investor impact creation via shareholder engagement and field building strategies; and governance related determinants of firm-level sustainable investments. Finally, the authors discuss the research gaps across these themes and identify future research questions.

This paper crystallizes research themes in sustainable investment literature using a vast coverage of globally conducted studies published in reputed journals till date. The findings of this study coupled with future research questions provide a well-grounded foundation for new researchers to further explore the emerging dimensions of this field.

As China shifts from a “human capital demographic dividend” to a “demographic dividend” as a source of economic growth, this paper examines the influence of social security system improvement on enterprises efforts to attract talent and enhance innovation ability.

This study uses a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2008 to 2019 to analyse the influences of social security contributions on enterprise innovation, and the mediating effect of human capital accumulation. The OLS, DID test, placebo test, 2SLS are used to test the research questions.

The authors find a significant positive correlation between social security contributions and enterprise innovation because social security contributions improve the accumulation of human capital, helping enterprises to attract talent, which in turn has a positive impact on corporate innovation. The positive correlation between social security contributions and enterprise innovation is more significant in private enterprises, STAR Market and GEM listed companies and labour-intensive enterprises.

These findings provide a theoretical basis for the formulation of relevant policies and the current reform of social security collection in China. The findings also have practical significance for the sustainable development of China's economy given its ageing population.

This study provides a new perspective, that is, from the perspective of human capital accumulation, to discuss the impact of social security contributions on enterprise innovation, and enriches the relevant literature on the economic consequences of social security contributions and the influencing factors of corporate innovation.

This paper aims to further contribute to the growing stream of literature on the CEO's impact on corporate social responsibility (CSR). The authors shed light on the implications of attunement theory on which relatively less research has been done. Furthermore, this paper strives to reconcile contradictory findings of the effect of CEO tenure on CSR and use the immediate changes of CSR enacted by the new CEO upon firm value.

The empirical strategy of the paper is centered around CEO transition. Applying first difference model, the authors identify a tenure-varying pattern of CEO influence on CSR. Moreover, the authors base the analyses of CSR value relevance on the sudden change of CSR during CEO transition, and use a within-industry matching approach as the inferential strategy. Manual data collection is conducted extensively for robustness checks.

The authors find that CSR activities change drastically at the beginning of the new CEO's ascendancy. One exception to this general pattern of CSR policy change is when the new CEO is brought from outside the organization, a result supporting the attunement theory. The authors find that firm value increases (decreases) when the new CEO increases (decreases) the CSR investment above (below) the industry norm.

This paper is among the first ones in the extant literature that directly examines the analytical implications of attunement theory concerning the CEO's impact on the firm's CSR policies. Furthermore, the positive association between CSR and firm value corroborates the arguments of instrumental stakeholder theory.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the nonlinear effects of corporate philanthropy on the responses of both internal and external stakeholders as well as its impact on corporate financial performance.

Based on the stakeholder theory, the authors developed a conceptual model to examine the nonlinear effects of corporate philanthropy on company performance. For the empirical analysis, data from 397 company-years was analyzed using a using a Heckman two-stage model. The robustness of the findings was also confirmed through panel regression analysis.

The study revealed a linear relationship between corporate reputation and corporate philanthropy, whereas job satisfaction exhibited a nonlinear relationship with corporate philanthropy.

This research bridges the gap in extant literature by scrutinizing the nonlinear associations between corporate philanthropy and financial performance. Additionally, it addresses an emerging scholarly demand to uncover the “dark side” of corporate philanthropy through an investigation into its adverse impacts on employee satisfaction. Moreover, the study augments existing understandings of stakeholder theory and corporate philanthropy, positing that the influence of corporate philanthropy, as conceptualized through stakeholder theory, hinges on perceived fairness in multilateral relationships.

Recognizing the severity of COVID-19 on the US economy, the authors investigate the behavior of US-listed firms towards leverage speed of adjustment (SOA) during the pandemic. While prior evidence (based on an international study) shows that firm leverage increased during the pandemic leading to a higher SOA toward leverage ratios, leverage for US firms during the same period reduced drastically. Yet there is a dearth of empirical studies on the behavior of US-listed firms' SOA during the pandemic. The authors fill this void.

The study includes US-listed non-financial and non-utility firms for the period 2015Q1-2021Q4, covering a total sample of 45,213 firm-quarter observations. The authors’ empirical strategy is based on the generalized method of moments (GMM) and firm-fixed effect methodology, controlling for firm- and quarter-fixed effects.

Three main findings are established: (1) while the SOA toward book target increased during the pandemic, SOA toward market target increased significantly only for less valued and cash-constrained firms; (2) firms in states most impacted by the pandemic adjusted faster towards target ratio; and (3) while the emergence of the pandemic and the overall firm-level risk increased (decreased) the deviation from book (market) target, firm-level risk partially mediated the effect of the pandemic on how far firms deviated from target ratio.

This study enhances our understanding of leverage adjustment during the crisis and shows that risk avoidance motive and the market value of firms are key determinants of convergence rate during the crisis and further demonstrates that market leverage is more sensitive to market dynamics. As such, caution must be taken when dealing with and interpreting market leverage SOA.

Although prior evidence based on international study provides insights into how firms behave toward their leverage ratios because of the pandemic, little is known about how US firms react to the pandemic in terms of the target ratios, particularly (1) since the USA is one of the severely affected countries and (2) firms in the USA reduced their leverage ratios as against what prior evidence shows. The authors provide evidence to explain how and why US firms reacted toward their SOA during the pandemic.