Search results

The study examines the effects of corporate governance and countrywide institutions and risk factors on corporate liquidity.

Using firm-level data, the authors analyze the effect of corporate governance and various economic, regulatory and social institutions on the liquidity of firms operating in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The authors use fixed-effects, firm-specific and country-level controls, disaggregated analysis, sensitivity and endogeneity analysis to test the robustness of the estimates.

The corporate governance characteristics of firms influence in diverse ways their liquidity decisions. The independence and diversity of the board and institutional ownership are especially strong predictors. The effect also depends on the size of the firm and the degree of economic development and exhibits time sensitivity and nonlinearity. Enforcement institutions and risk factors play a strong role.

The analysis contributes to the literature by using a large sample of countries and firms over a larger period, distinguishing between poorer and richer countries and using sensitivity and endogeneity analysis. The analysis considers explicitly the role of regulatory and enforcement conditions, social structures and religious beliefs.

Monetary policy has major impacts on macroeconomic indicators of the country. Accordingly, uncertainty regarding monetary policy shifts can cause challenges and risks for businesses, financial markets and investors. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate how real estate market volatility responds to monetary policy uncertainty.

The GARCH-MIDAS model is applied in this study to investigate the nexus between monetary policy uncertainty and real estate market volatility. This model was fundamentally instituted to accommodate low-frequency variables.

The results of this study reveal that increased monetary policy uncertainty highly affects the volatility in real estate market during the peak period of COVID-19 as compared to full sample period and COVID-19 recovery period; hence, a significant decline is evident in real estate market volatility during crisis.

This study is particularly focused on peak and recovery period of COVID-19 considering the geographical region of Greece, Japan and the USA. This study provides a complete perspective on the nexus between monetary policy uncertainty and real estate markets volatility in three distinct economic views.

This paper aims to examine the dynamic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and government policy on real house price indices in five emerging economies, namely, Brazil, China, Thailand, Turkey and South Africa.

The authors use the local projection method with a panel data set of these countries spanning from January 2020 to July 2021.

The number of COVID-19 confirmed positive cases raised housing prices, whereas government containment measures reduced them. Both conventional and unconventional monetary policy implemented by central banks to cope with the COVID-19 helped increase housing prices. These effects were strengthened by the US monetary policy via globalized financial markets.

First, while previous researches typically concentrated on developed countries, the authors investigate emerging economies where proportionally more people were badly affected by the pandemic. Second, a panel data set of five emerging economies enabled the authors to examine the dynamic effects of the COVID-19 crisis on housing prices. Third, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study evaluating the influences of easing monetary policy on housing prices in emerging economies during the pandemic.

Our purpose is the examination of the effects of fiscal policy on private lending for the Eurozone countries. The emphasis is on the identification of the time path of government spending and bank lending.

Fiscal policy is a main factor of macroeconomic stability for the euro area economy. This paper, investigates the impact of government spending on bank lending. For this reason, we present a dynamic theoretical model with a perfectly competitive banking sector, estimated using panel cointegration for the Eurozone countries from 2000Q1 to 2022Q2.

Our findings highlight that, in the long run, consistent management of government spending can have a beneficial multiplicative impact on bank lending for housing and business reasons. This finding is stronger in magnitude for business versus housing lending. The high level of homogeneity of our results across Eurozone countries has positive implications for a common fiscal policy in the future. Finally, authorities should know that policy adjustments are quicker in housing lending when compared to business lending.

In this paper, we contribute to the existing literature, concentrating on the investigation of any existence of long-run and short-run relationships between government spending and bank lending. Additionally, our analysis allows one to investigate the contribution of each Eurozone member state in the short-run and long-run model’s dynamics, providing significant outcomes for the implementation of economic policy and the need for fiscal discipline in the Eurozone.

This study aims to analyze the relationship between economic complexity (EC) and the green economy (GE) with the real and accrual earnings management (REM and AEM) of the listed companies on the Iranian stock exchange. The authors study whether EC and the GE can affect REM and AEM.

The authors used a multiple regression model based on the panel data and a fixed effect model to test hypotheses. The sample includes 1,351 companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange from 2014 to 2021.

The results show a positive and significant relationship between EC and the GE with REM and AEM.

Considering the importance of a GE and since this research is the first to address the mentioned topic in emerging markets, it provides helpful insights for financial statement users, analysts and legal entities. Our study fills the literature gap and promotes knowledge regarding its relevant literature. Examining this relationship portrays the latest research perspectives in this field. The information from this study can assist in environmental management decision-making and relevant policymaking, promoting the movement toward sustainable development.

Throughout the 21st century, US households have experienced unprecedented levels of leverage. This dynamic has been exacerbated by income shortfalls during the COVID-19 crisis. Leveraging and deleveraging decisions affect household consumption. This study investigates the effect of the dynamics of household leverage and consumption on the stock market.

The authors explore the relation between household leverage and consumption in the context of the consumption capital asset pricing model (CCAPM). The authors test the model's implication that leverage has a negative risk premium by transforming the asset pricing restriction into an unconditional linear factor model and estimate the model using the general method of moments procedure. The authors run time-series regressions to estimate individual stocks' exposures to leverage, and cross-sectional regressions to investigate the leverage risk premium.

The authors show that shocks to household debt have strong and lasting effects on consumption growth. The authors extend the CCAPM to accommodate this effect and find, using various test assets, a negative risk premium associated with household deleveraging. Looking at individual stocks the authors show that the deleveraging risk premium is not explained by well-known risk factors.

This paper contributes to the literature on the role of leverage in economics and finance by establishing a relation between household leverage and spending decisions. The authors provide novel evidence that households' leveraging and deleveraging decisions can be a fundamental and influential force in determining asset prices. Further, this paper argues that household leverage might explain the small, persistent, and predictable component in consumption growth hypothesised in the long-run risk asset pricing literature.

The process of predicting construction costs and forecasting price fluctuations is a significant and challenging undertaking for project managers. This study aims to develop a construction cost index (CCI) for Jordan’s construction industry using fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) and predict future CCI values using traditional and machine learning (ML) techniques.

The most influential cost items were selected by conducting a literature review and confirmatory expert interviews. The cost items’ weights were calculated using FAHP to develop the CCI formula.

The results showed that the random forest model had the lowest mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 1.09%, followed by Extreme Gradient Boosting and K-nearest neighbours with MAPEs of 1.41% and 1.46%, respectively.

The novelty of this study lies within the use of FAHP to address the ambiguity of the impact of various cost items on CCI. The developed CCI equation and ML models are expected to significantly benefit construction managers, investors and policymakers in making informed decisions by enhancing their understanding of cost trends in the construction industry.

Buried pipelines under various soil embankment heights are cost-effective alternatives to transporting liquid products. This paper aims to assist pipeline architects and professionals in selecting the most cost-effective buried reinforced concrete pipelines under deep embankment soil with minor structural reinforcement while meeting shear stress requirements, safety and reliability constraints.

It is unfeasible to experimentally assess pipeline efficiency with high soil fill depth. Thus, to fill this gap, this research uses a dependable finite element analysis (FEA) to conduct a parametric study and carry out such an issue. This research considered reinforced concrete pipes with diameters of 25, 50, 75, 100, 125 and 150 cm at depths of 5, 10, 15 and 20 m.

According to this research, the proposed best pipeline diameter-to-thickness (D/T) proportions for soil embankment heights 5, 10, 15 and 20 m are 8.75, 4.8, 3.5 and 3.1, correspondingly. The cost-effective reinforced concrete (RC) pipeline thickness dramatically rises if the soil embankment reaches 20 m, indicating that the soil embankment depth highly influences it. Most of the analyzed reinforced concrete pipelines had a maximum deflection value of less than 1 cm, telling that the FEA accurately identified the pipeline width, needed flexural steel reinforcement, and concrete crack width while avoiding significant distortion.

The cost-effective thickness for the analyzed structured concrete pipes was calculated by considering the lowest required value of steel reinforcement. An algorithm was developed based on the parametric scientific findings to predict the ideal pipeline D/T ratio. A construction case study was also shown to assist architects and professionals in determining the best reinforced concrete pipeline geometry for a specific soil embankment height.

The study explores the evolution of Indian domestic electronics manufacturing post-economic reforms and also investigates the lack of natural growth stages among Indian start-up/SME electronics manufactures.

The theoretical framework is inspired by Dawar and Frost's survival strategy theory that local companies may follow to overcome competitive threats from MNCs. The study adopts a qualitative methodology, more precisely, a phenomenological approach to walking through policy/regulatory reforms amid market distortions, technological gaps and colonial mindset from the perspective of Indian domestic electronics manufacturers. The study has adopted Gioia method of data analysis to inductively suggest a few research propositions.

The phenomenological approach revealed eight essential structure (essence) narratives to explore the complex issue that plague the industry: make in India, made in India, preferential market access strategy, equitable market access strategy, blue ocean strategy, competitive positioning strategy, technical capability and importance of policy/regulatory arbitrage.

The situation of Indian electronics manufacturing units is comparable to the bonsai tree situation, where natural evolution in business stages does not exist; they are born and die as start-ups/MSMEs. The study advocates for equitable market access by removing market distortions. The long-term solution may lie in making available locally manufactured products as a dependable alternative to the imported products or produced locally by MNC OEMs in terms of cost, quality, technology, volume, after-sale service and integrated supply chain.

While the favorable FDI policies, digital India and make-in India initiatives have strengthened domestic electronics production, it is yet to significantly impact India's position in global trade, including manufacturing and exports.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how individual risk preference influences the borrowing of payday loans – a prevalent type of cash loan in the USA with exorbitantly high-interest rates. Additionally, this paper tests how risk preference determines other alternative financial services (AFS), including pawn shops, rent-to-own purchases, title loans, etc.

The author applies Probit and Tobit regressions to test the relationship between individual risk preference and payday borrowing, based on the state-by-state survey data from National Financial Capability Study (NFCS) sponsored by Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Investor Education Foundation.

Individuals with higher risk tolerance are more likely to borrow payday loans and other AFS, after controlling for financial situation, financial literacy, overconfidence and demographic features.

This paper is the first to study risk preference as an explanation to the high cost and widely used payday loan services in the United States of America. This study provides evidence that these cash loans are determined by inherent human characteristics. The finding provides new insight for the policymakers and regulators in the consumer debt market.