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The purposes of this paper are to delve into the “liability of foreignness” among immigrants and to explore factors that may enhance or moderate such liability while obtaining jobs in host countries. We explore the competition for jobs in a host country among foreign-born individuals from various backgrounds and local residents, by examining such factors as their human capital, as well as, for the foreign-born, their duration of residence in the host country.

Applying configurational theorizing, we propose that the presence of specific human capital can help reduce the challenges associated with the “liability of foreignness” for migrants who have shorter durations of stay in the host country, and, to a lesser extent, for female migrants. Our study draws upon extensive career data spanning several decades and involving 249 employees within a Danish multinational enterprise.

We find that specific human capital helps established immigrants in general, although female immigrants are more vulnerable. We furthermore find a strong “gender liability” in the industry even for local females, including returnees in the host countries. Our findings suggest that for immigrants, including returnees, career building requires a mix of right human capital and tenure in the host country, and that career building is especially challenging for female immigrants.

While the concept of “liability of foreignness” – focussing on discrimination faced by immigrants in the labour market – has been brought to the fore, a notable gap exists in empirical research pertaining to studies aiming at disentangling potential means to overcome such liability, as well as in studies seeking to explore this issue from a stance of gendered experience.

The study examines potential differences in socioeconomic status (SES) and emigration patterns between Greek international students (IS) and non-international students (non-IS) and their relationship to the brain drain from Greece.

The study draws on a unique database including all the Greek PhD holders and provides detailed information on their SES and mobility patterns. Furthermore, an individual-level SES index is constructed including both human capital and socioeconomic indicators to estimate the magnitude of the brain drain in terms of the SES that emigrated abroad between 1,985 and 2,018.

First, Greek IS have a higher educational, professional and economic status compared to Greek non-IS. Moreover, they exhibit a more international profile, inasmuch as they are more likely to remain abroad after graduation to seek employment. Second, the magnitude of the brain drain in terms of SES emigrated abroad (22.5% of the total) is greater than in terms of individuals who moved abroad (13.4% of the total). Specifically, the SES that outflows with an additional Greek skilled emigrant (that is, an additional IS and non-IS residing abroad) is 1.1 times greater than the SES that remains in Greece with an additional non-IS residing in Greece.

The study contributes to the scientific discussion that relates the SES of IS and highly skilled migrants to brain drain and fills the gap in the relevant literature.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2022-0607.

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 reality with many developing countries is that the countries have failed to create enough jobs for the poor and vulnerable. Under such circumstances, vulnerable employment plays a critical role in providing earning opportunities to people who are unemployed and determining the economic and social progress of such economies. The study aims to examine the possible non-linear relationship between vulnerable employment and growth in light of this background.

The study employed five-yearly averaged data of 73 developing countries for the period 2000–2019. The empirical analysis is performed using the dynamic panel data analysis and the two-step system generalised method of moments (GMM) approach. The estimations are run separately for male, female and total vulnerable employment. The threshold levels are obtained using Sasabuchi (1980) and Lind and Mehlum (2010) (SLM) test. Several sensitivity checks are performed to validate the results.

The findings of the study suggest a non-linear U-shaped relationship between vulnerable employment and growth. Thus, a positive association between vulnerable employment and growth is witnessed at higher levels of vulnerable employment. At lower levels, the relationship is negative. Threshold levels for male, female and total vulnerable employment are 46.80%, 49.29 and 50.94%, respectively. Therefore, vulnerable employment beyond the threshold levels is found to be positively associated with growth.

Countries below the threshold level of vulnerable employment should understand why these workers are not able to contribute to the growth despite working so hard. If any socio-economic barriers hinder their contribution towards growth, such barriers require greater policy attention. Countries with vulnerable employment levels above the threshold level should recognise the contributions of these workers towards the growth and actively support them in increasing their economic contribution. In either case, given the precarious circumstances under which these workers work and the pittance earnings, policy interventions aimed at ensuring decent working conditions and better earnings for these workers are encouraged.

The current study is the first one to examine the relationship between vulnerable employment and growth to the best of the author's knowledge. As such, it makes novel contributions to the literature on development policy.

This paper aims to meta-analyze the results of the prior studies related to the relationship of human capital and financial performance in Islamic banking.

To examine the relationship between human capital and financial of Islamic banks, 23 empirical studies having sample of 15,607 are considered for the meta-analysis. Moreover, different measures related to financial performance including return on assets (ROA), return of equity (ROE) and Tobin’s Q have been taken as moderating for further subgroup analysis.

The results of meta-analysis reveal a positive correlation between human capital and financial performance with an effect size of 0.268. The subgroup analyses showed significant positive associations of human capital with ROA and ROE, insignificant with Tobin’s Q.

This study suggests Islamic banking should prioritize human capital development, maintain consistency and adopt a long-term perspective. Future research should consider context-specific factors and harmonize human capital and financial performance measurements for consensus.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the impact of institutional quality, foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and human capital development on Indonesia’s poverty rate.

The quantile regression on data ranging from 1984 to 2019 was used to capture the relationship between the impact of the independent variables (FDI inflows, institutional quality and human capital development) on Indonesia’s poverty rate at different quantiles of the conditional distribution.

The empirical results reveal that low-quantile institutional quality is detrimental to poverty eradication, whereas FDI inflows and human capital development are significant at higher quantiles of distribution. This implies that higher-value FDI and advanced human capital development are critical to lifting Indonesians out of poverty.

Policymakers should prioritise strategies that advance human capital development, create an enticing investment climate that attracts high-value investments and improve institutional quality levels.

This study contributes to the existing literature because, compared to previous studies that focussed on estimating the conditional mean of the explanatory variable on the poverty rate. It rather provides a more comprehensive understanding of the quantiles of interest of FDI inflows and institutional quality on the Indonesian poverty rate, allowing for more targeted policies.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2023-0733

The purpose of this study is to examine the dynamic relationship between intellectual capital (IC) and its components on financial performance of banks within the selected eight countries of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The study utilizes the balanced panel data of 37 publicly listed banks from eight leading ASEAN economies for the period of 2017–2021. In this sense, the authors applied the Ante Pulic's typology, i.e. value-added intellectual coefficient (VAIC™) to evaluate the efficiency of intangible and tangible assets. While, investigating the dynamic nature of relationship, the authors employed the generalized system method of moments because of its power to account for the problem of endogeneity and heteroscedasticity.

The results of the study demonstrate that banks in ASEAN countries shed a varied degree of a spotlight on VAIC™ and its components to create value. The findings revealed that structural capital efficiency is significantly associated with earning per share (EPS), return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE), compared to human capital efficiency (HCE) and capital employed efficiency of ASEAN banks. These results endorse the importance of resource- and knowledge-based views of organizations to leverage the financial performance of banks. However, contrary to theoretical expectations, this study found no positive relationship between HCE with ROA and ROE. Whereas, the relationship of VAIC™ is positive and significant with EPS and ROE but it remains statistically very marginal.

There are some inherent limitations in this study that could be opportunities for future research. The current study uses the VAIC™ typology, but future researchers can use the modified value-added intellectual coefficient (MVAIC) or triangulation approach to enhance the validity and reliability of the study. Additionally, future research can investigate the similarities and differences among countries in terms of their cultural backgrounds and regulatory frameworks regarding the disclosure of intangibles. Furthermore, future research can increase the length and sample size of the study to enhance its generalizability.

The robust empirical findings extend the academic debate on IC by unveiling the dynamic nature of relationship between IC and financial performance in context of ASEAN banking sector. The findings provide plausible recommendations for policy makers (managers, regulators and stakeholders) to understand how to increase the IC efficiently, especially human capital as a source to evaluate the firms’ ability in determining value-added and financial performance. Further, findings of this study also suggest that how can policy makers get the benefit by investing more on structural capital as a valuable strategic source to guarantee the optimal performance returns.

Prior studies on IC have been country- and firm-specific, utilizing cross-sectional research designs. However, this research contributes to the limited literature by investigating the dynamic nature of the relationship between IC and financial performance of banks in the context of ASEAN countries using micro-panel data.

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.

The main aim of this study is to explore the role of multi-dimensional human capital on the economic growth of the Indian economy.

The study used the methodology given by World Bank, 2018) in calculating the human capital index (HCI). The HCI has been constructed at a regional level for all 28 Indian states and 8 Union Territories (UTs) for the period of 2015–2016. The study explored the linkages between HCI and per capita gross state domestic product (PGSDP). The study further employed OLS (Ordinary Least Square) for overall significance and Spearmen’s Rank correlation coefficient test for establishing the linkage between HCI and PGSDP.

The results indicate that quality education, expected year of schooling, and infant mortality rate play a significant role in the improvement of HCI which further impacts the productivity rate of the upcoming generation and the inclusive growth of the country. The findings show that Mizoram, Chandigarh and Kerala are better performing states while the Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are the worst performers. The results also show that there is a positive and statistically significant correlation between PGSDP and HCI and its components. Further, the results show that public expenditure on health and education has significant effect on HCI.

The results of this study would be useful for policymakers to identify the determinants and improve the position of Indian states in HCI. The results show that policymakers should focus on quality education and health to improve the productivity of future generation workers for sustainable and inclusive growth.

The study is the pioneering study to analyze the state-wise HCI in India using methods mentioned by the World Bank. Unlike previous studies, variables such as expected year of schooling, under-5 mortality rates and survival rates are constructed more pragmatically.

This study develops a robust model to measure intellectual capital efficiency (ICE). It also analyzes ICE across Gulf companies, sectors and countries.

This study uses data envelopment analysis (DEA), the Malmquist productivity index (MPI), difference tests and additional analyses on a dataset consisting of 276 firm-year observations.

The findings indicate that the study model is robust to additional analysis. The results show significant differences in ICE between firms during the study period and noteworthy differences between countries, where the Qatari and Bahraini firms achieved the best ICE compared to other countries.

The results of this study have significant ramifications for increasing knowledge of ICE analysis models among relevant parties. In addition, the findings may affect trading strategies because investors and financiers are motivated by the potential for lucrative financial returns on their investments in companies that prioritize ICE strategies.

This research contributes to the literature by proposing a robust model for estimating the ICE. It also compares ICE across Gulf companies, industries and countries to shed light on their ICE challenges.