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We propose an alternative rationale for why some firms employ veterans, driven not solely by benevolence but also by the prospect of enhanced outcomes. Financially, hiring veterans could correlate with improved stock market performance for the hiring company while aligning with corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Our study centers on the stock market performance of companies hiring veterans. It aims to underscore a lesser-known facet of the veteran employment discourse and its connection to the hiring firm's financial performance.

This paper evaluates the stock market performance of three VETS portfolios (made of companies that hire veterans) compared to the benchmark SPDR S&P 500 ETF. Using a modular approach, we create three VETS passive indices: VETSEW (equal-weighted index), VETSPW (price-weighted index) and VETSVW (value-weighted index). The study analyzes the annual returns, portfolio allocations, risk-adjusted performance metrics and style analysis of the portfolios from January 1, 2020, to December 31, 2022.

The findings indicate that all three VETS portfolios outperformed the benchmark, with higher ending balances and superior risk-adjusted ratios such as the Sharpe and Sortino ratios. Notably, the portfolios demonstrated resilience during challenging periods, including the COVID-19 pandemic, subsequent recovery and an inflationary period.

Limitations include the paper's focus solely on stock returns, suggesting a need for broader financial and management ratios. Moreover, a deeper exploration into how veterans contribute during turbulent times is suggested for further investigation. Although the study touches upon the financial performance of veteran-focused companies during challenging economic times, it does not extensively delve into the specific ways in which veterans add value under such circumstances, presenting an opportunity for further exploration.

Firms that employ veterans amid the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrate favorable risk-adjusted returns, underscoring the potential of veterans as valuable crisis-time assets. Our research further underscores the correlation between veteran hiring and enhanced financial prowess. These insights carry significant policy implications, including CSR initiatives for hiring veterans, skill translation and training and collaboration with veteran organizations.

The paper's findings suggest significant implications: (1) Policymakers could incentivize firms to hire veterans through tax benefits or grants, leveraging their skills for organizational resilience. (2) Collaborative efforts between policymakers and firms can promote responsible hiring, boosting a company's reputation through diversity and inclusion, positively impacting society. (3) Support for skill translation from military to civilian jobs is crucial. Programs certifying skills and tailored education aid veterans' successful transition into the workforce. (4) Collaborations between policymakers, veteran organizations and private sector entities can create networks, job placements and support systems for veterans' employment.

Numerous prior studies within the domain of corporate social responsibility have predominantly neglected the contributions veterans offer to businesses and the underlying reasons behind firms' decisions to employ them. Our research uniquely concentrates on the stock market performance of companies that choose to hire veterans.

This study aims to provide empirical evidence on the return and volatility spillover structures between Bitcoin, Fintech stocks and Asian-Pacific equity markets over time and during different market conditions, and their implications for portfolio management.

We use Time-varying parameter vector autoregressive and quantile frequency connectedness approach models for the connectedness framework, in conjunction with Diebold and Yilmaz’s connectivity approach. Additionally, we use the minimum connectedness portfolio model to highlight implications for portfolio management.

Regarding the uncertainty of the whole system, we show a small contribution from Bitcoin and Fintech, with a higher contribution from the four Asian Tigers (Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand). The quantile and frequency analyses also demonstrate that the link among assets is symmetric, with short-term spillovers having the largest influence. Finally, Bitcoins and Fintech stocks are excellent diversification and hedging instruments for Asian equity investors.

There is an instantaneous, symmetric and dynamic return and volatility spillover between Asian stock markets, Fintech and Bitcoin. This conclusion should be considered by investors and portfolio managers when creating risk diversification strategies, as well as by policymakers when implementing their financial stability policies.

The study’s major contribution is to analyze the volatility spillover between Bitcoin, Fintech and Asian stock markets, which is dynamic, symmetric and immediate.

The cognitive biases exhibited by investors could hinder their capacity for logical reasoning and impact their perception and reaction to information when making financial choices. So, this study was done to identify the behavioral biases that hinder investors' sound decision-making at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX).

A cross-sectional study was undertaken employing a causal research design approach. Questionnaires were administered to individual investors of the PSX as the data collection methodology. The data were subsequently analyzed through the utilization of the Smart PLS Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique.

The results suggest that information factors and cognitive biases, namely home bias, geographical bias, investor sentiment, salience, and over/under reaction have a positive association with the investors' choices at PSX.

The study’s emphasis is on the impact of behavioral biases on individual investors only, even though such biases also influence the investment decisions of institutional investors.

The study holds implications for scholars engaged in the field of behavioral finance as well as professionals involved in the stock market, particularly those interacting with individual investors and personal finance. Additionally, the current study will take into account investors, financial advisors, practitioners, policymakers, investment experts, stakeholders or target groups, etc. to support various groups in their professional activity and to help them overcome such biases that influence their sound decision-making power.

The innovative aspect of this research is its ability to advance the understanding of the conceptual underpinnings and social structure of behavioral biases by critically analyzing the body of prior research and adding value to the existing body of literature on behavioral finance in Pakistan by investigating the combined impact of never-studied variables, i.e. geographical bias and information variables, understudied behavioral variables, i.e. home bias and salience and studied variables, i.e. investor sentiment and over/under reaction on individual investor investment decisions at PSX.

The aim of this paper is to determine whether the efficiency of banks’ human capital (HC) has moderating effects on the relationship between asset diversification and bank performance over the 2008–2020 period.

Our study considers generalized least squares estimation in fixed effects panel.

Results show that banks with higher levels of HC and higher degree of diversification reduce bank profitability and efficiency. The results also depict that the financial stability-reducing effects of Income diversification decrease as bank HC efficiency increases. At the same time, the effects of income and asset diversity on financial stability change depending on the performance aspect.

Previous research on banks’ performance is concentrated on asset diversification. This article broadens to the HC, Asset diversification and the moderating effects of the profitability, stability and efficiency of French Banks.

In a dual financial system where both conventional and Islamic financial institutions co-exist, the motives behind customers’ choices of financial products remain a crucial factor to comprehend. Thus, this paper aims to examine the influence of Islamic financial literacy (IFL) and motives (religious, ethical and economic) on the holdings of Islamic financial products (IFPs).

The sample consists of 234 bank customers in Klang Valley, Malaysia, with data obtained through a convenience sampling method. The instrument used was a digital survey that was electronically sent to respondents.

Findings reveal that IFL and religious motives positively influence IFPs, whereas economic motives negatively influence IFPs. Ethical motives have no significant impact on IFPs.

The findings imply that IFPs attract customers due to their adherence to Islamic teachings, indicating strong religious motives. However, the negative leanings of the economic motive suggest that customers may perceive IFPs as less favourable due to higher costs and risks relative to conventional products. Islamic financial institutions must widen their efforts in educating the public regarding IFPs on the benefits of adherence to Shariah principles and at the same time improve their products’ cost-benefits.

This study contributes to the literature by comprehensively examining IFPs in terms of both assets and financing products. In addition, IFL is measured in an all-inclusive way, covering different dimensions of knowledge related to Islamic savings, investments, protection and financing.

This study aims to identify the financial attributes of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as safe havens, hedges or diversifiers against traditional (stock indices, foreign exchange, gold and government bonds) and digital (Bitcoin and Ethereum) assets.

The quantile via moments was utilized, and the data spanned from 20 September 2021 to 31 January 2022. The authors incorporated feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) and difference-generalized method of moments (diff-GMM) as the robustness check.

Overall, NFTs offer strongly safe havens, hedging and diversifier attributes against cryptocurrencies, while weak properties for traditional assets. The specific findings are: (1) Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) serves as a strong hedge for Bitcoin during market rise; (2) Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) serves as a strong safe haven against Bitcoin during market bull; (3) Crypto punk (CP) provides strong safe havens properties for gold during market turmoil while serving as a strong hedge against gold and Bitcoin on average and (4) the three blue-chip NFTs are powered by Ethereum blockchain, thus serving as a diversifier against Ethereum.

Bitcoin investors are suggested to include NFTs in their investment portfolio to mitigate the losses when Bitcoin falls. Meanwhile, the inclusion of crypto punk is advised for risk-averse investors who invest in gold. NFTs are powered by the Ethereum blockchain, indicating co-movement among them and thus, serve as diversifiers. Policymakers and regulators are suggested to watch closely over NFTs' great development and restructure the existing policies and thus, stabilization of asset markets can be achieved.

The originality aspects are: (1) focusing on the three blue-chip NFTs (i.e. BAYC, MAYC and CP) that are categorized as the largest NFTs by floor market capitalization; (2) testing the NFT attributes (safe havens, hedges or diversifiers) against traditional and digital assets, a.k.a., cryptocurrencies and (3) panel setting on 14 countries with the highest NFT users.

The study aims to identify the trends in the scholarly works on investors preference toward sustainable investments by synthesizing their knowledge structures.

A systematic search approach using PRISMA protocol on the Scopus database was used to generate a sample of 403 publications for the purpose of bibliometric analysis. The study performed a range of analyses, including three-field plot analysis, thematic mapping and cluster analysis using the VOSviewer and Biblioshiny software.

The key findings comprise the identification of four clusters within the subject, namely, corporate social responsibility and environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing, ethical investing, green finance and socially responsible investments. This study offers a clear picture of the publishing advancement and research diversification of four selected clusters' research themes, and cluster subthemes.

The research reveals the social and intellectual structure of the field, which provides the future researchers an insights into emerging themes and provides them opportunities for collaboration as well. The outcomes of the research hold significance for policymakers, governing bodies, aspiring scholars, advocates for the environment and investors. It offers an insightful framework for implementing sustainable practices, balancing profits, and environmental risks and creating value from environmentally conscious research and practice.

The future direction and extensiveness of research work have been explored using the themes generated. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study, which combines the VOSviewer and Biblioshiny tools, is likely the first attempt to provide a thorough bibliometric analysis in the research sphere of investors preferences toward sustainable investments.

The study seeks to evaluate the effect of capital adequacy and competition on the liquidity creation of Kenyan commercial banks.

Unbalanced panel data from 36 Kenyan commercial banks with licenses from 2001 to 2020 is used in the study. The generalized method of moments (GMM), a two-step system, is employed in the investigation. To increase the robustness and prevent erroneous findings, serial correlation tests and instrumental validity analyses are used. The methodology developed by Berger and Bouwman (2009) is used to estimate the commercial banks' levels of liquidity creation.

The study supports the financial fragility-crowding out hypothesis by finding a significant negative effect of capital adequacy on the liquidity creation of commercial banks. The research also identifies a significant inverse relationship between competition and liquidity creation, depicting competition's value-destroying effect.

A trade-off exists between capital adequacy and liquidity creation, which must be carefully evaluated as changes in capital requirements are considered. The value-destroying effect of competition on liquidity creation presents a case for policy geared toward consolidating banks' operations through possible mergers and acquisitions.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to empirically offer evidence concurrently on the effect of competition and capital adequacy on the liquidity creation of commercial banks in a developing economy such as Kenya. Additionally, the authors employ a novel measure of competition at the firm level.

This study examines the relationship between Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) practices and financial distress in times of uncertainty.

Thomson Reuters ESG database, Compustat and Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) were used to derive a final sample size of 1,572 firms and 11,618 firm-year observations from 2003 to 2022. Fixed-effects regression was used to analyze the data.

It was found that increasing ESG involvement leads to an increase in Z score (i.e. lower financial distress), and this impact was more profound during the COVID-19 period and also when firms' innovativeness increased. However, during the COVID-19 period, increases in capital expenditures weaken the positive effect of ESG on financial distress.

This study contributes to the growing body of literature on the impact of ESG performance on financial distress and the nature of this relationship during times of uncertainty such as COVID-19.

This study offers insights to managers and practitioners when developing their corporate financial strategies, particularly financial distress management, showing the potential benefits of innovativeness and capital intensity during turbulent times similar to COVID-19.

Little knowledge exists on how ESG engagement helps weather financial distress during periods of uncertainty due to external shocks (e.g. COVID-19). This paper looks at the effect of ESG engagement on financial distress and how capital intensity and innovativeness could influence this relationship while giving fresh insights into the impact of COVID-19.

This paper explores how blockchain technology can enhance information quality within project management information systems (PMIS), thereby positively affecting knowledge management, learning capabilities and project portfolio success.

We employ a literature review and a theory-based approach to develop a conceptual framework and set of propositions that integrate key principles from blockchain technology, project management and dynamic capabilities theory. Subsequently, a focus group is conducted to refine our propositions, providing insights and examples demonstrating the potential value of blockchain in project management.

The findings suggest that blockchain significantly impacts the information quality within PMIS. This improvement in information quality enhances traceability, reliability and security of project data, facilitating better decision-making and governance. The focus group revealed blockchain’s benefits in managing confidential data and streamlining knowledge sharing processes, ultimately contributing to project portfolio success.

This research offers a novel conceptual framework and original insights into the application of blockchain in project management, particularly within the context of Industry 4.0, paving the way for future research on digital transformation in project management.