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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the financial structure of Italian cooperatives in the period before and during the crisis (2004-2013), in relation to two discriminating factors. At this end, it focuses on two research questions: What financial dynamics the Italian cooperatives have involved before, during and after the 2008 crisis, that is, in the decade 2004/2013? Are there statistically differences between business sectors and geographic area?

Secondary data on AIDA database have been used. The financial structure is assessed using two ratios: the financial leverage ratio and quick ratio. The final sample consists of 1,446 cooperatives. The trend and exploratory analysis, analysis of variance and Tukey-Kramer post-hoc test have been used.

The financial structure of cooperatives has not been substantially affected by the crisis in any geographic area and business sector, by virtue of resilience of their business model. Moreover, these two factors produce statistically significant differences in the financial structure of cooperatives.

The study takes into account only the cooperatives that survived the crisis, so, presumably, the strongest. Moreover, another and more ratios should be considered at the end to have a more complete view on the financial dynamics.

The literature on resilience of cooperatives is still not very rich. Moreover, this work analyses and integrates aspects and approaches that are not usually considered together.

The aim of this study is to isolate the firm characteristics that affect capital structure.

The investigation has been performed using panel data procedure for a sample of 129 Greek companies listed on the Athens Stock Exchange during 1997‐2001. The number of the companies in the sample corresponds to the 63 per cent of the listed firms in 1996. The firm characteristics are analyzed as determinants of capital structure according to different explanatory theories. The hypothesis that is tested in this paper is that the debt ratio at time t depends on the size of the firm at time t, the growth of the firm at time t, its quick ratio at time t and its interest coverage ratio at time t. The firms that maintain a debt ratio above 50 per cent using a dummy variable are also distinguished.

The findings of this study justify the hypothesis that there is a negative relation between the debt ratio of the firms and their growth, their quick ratio and their interest coverage ratio. Size appears to maintain a positive relation and according to the dummy variable there is a differentiation in the capital structure among the firms with a debt ratio greater than 50 per cent and those with a debt ratio lower than 50 per cent. These results are consistent with the theoretical background presented in the second section of the paper.

This paper goes someway to proving that financial theory does provide some help in understanding how the chosen financing mix affects the firm's value.

Many businesses are faced with liquidity problems for various reasons. This is especially true for small businesses, since most must operate with fewer sources of both short and long term financing than larger firms. Where less financing is available, more assets must be held in liquid form to meet daily transactions and emergency requirements. Larger firms, that have better access to both the money and capital markets, can afford to hold fewer current assets and meet cash requirements just as quickly and efficiently through borrowing.

The authors investigate whether firms can ensure their financial stability during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic by having ex-ante risk management.

The authors study 279 Vietnamese listed firms by investigating their disclosure of risk awareness and risk management tool(s) in the 2019 annual reports. The authors then examine whether prior risk awareness and adoption of risk management tool(s) can enhance the firms' financial ratios during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors find that firms that disclose their risk management tool(s) in the 2019 annual reports have better asset utilization and higher liquidity during the COVID-19 pandemic than the others. However, firms that simply express their risk awareness exert no stronger financial stability. In addition, the authors document that debt management is the most popular and most effective tool to ensure firms' financial stability during the crisis.

The study highlights the need for ex-ante risk management for future pandemics. The authors also suggest that stakeholders can rely on the degree of risk management tool utilization to evaluate the financial stability of firms.

Status of fiscal health of local governments helps in determining planned budget and realistic action plan for citizens’ wellbeing. This paper aims to assess the fiscal health of local governments in Bangladesh.

Using data from 18 south-western municipalities of Bangladesh during the fiscal year 2018–19, this research measures fiscal health by applying Wang, Dennis and Tu’s solvency test and Brown’s Ten-Point Test.

The result shows that one-tenth of the entire municipalities are endowed with better position, whereas almost 39 percent of municipalities are in the worst situation and nearly 50 percent of municipalities are in the average category. Because of having limited liabilities, the municipalities are endowed with more than enough cash solvency and reasonable level of long-run solvency. The key problems are that budgetary solvency of all municipalities is not satisfactory, and service expenses are more than their revenue generation. This study suggests improving the financial capabilities of the municipalities through properly using their resources, generating loans, and claiming a need-based budget from the central government.

The paper investigates the status of fiscal solvency of local governments in Bangladesh in a new dimension. The findings might be helpful to policymakers in budgeting for development initiatives of local governments in Bangladesh so that citizens’ better wellbeing is ensured.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the pattern between government innovation funding and enterprise value creation. Many factors, including government innovation funding, R&D ability, corporate governance and some company characteristics significantly affected the efficiency of firm value creation.

This paper proposed a novel methodology based on clustering-rough sets to explore the characteristics of enterprise value creation behavior, and map the relationship between government innovation funding and enterprise value creation. The agglomerative hierarchical clustering (AHC) algorithm were used to classify firm performance and get two types of value creation efficiencies and to discretize condition attributes because the rough set theory cannot deal with continuous attributes. This paper utilized the rough sets method to realize data mining and get rules of government innovation funding and enterprise value creation.

R&D ability, proportion of independent directors, remuneration of directors, operating revenue, number of employees, price-earnings ratio, quick ratio, capital intensity and ROA were important to identify firm value creation efficiency when government funded the firms. Firms of high level of government innovation funding, high lagged R&D ratio, high remuneration of directors, low price-earnings ratio, low quick ratio, moderate capital intensity and high ROA were more likely to have high efficiency of value creation.

Since China implemented the innovation-driven development strategy, facilitating enterprise innovation has become an important way to achieve high-quality economic growth. With constantly increasing of Chinese government innovation funding, studying on the effect of government innovation funding on firm’s value creation is significant to improve the efficiency of government resource allocation. It is valuable to reveal the pattern between government innovation funding and enterprise value creation based on the value added theory. The rules obtained could be used to provide decision-making support to improve the efficiency of government innovation funding and prevent waste of government resources effectively.

The purpose of this paper is to establish an objective measure for the success of fast fashion to deliver measurable financial improvement.

A statistical analysis of published financial data has been used to determine if any statistically significant difference exists between the financial performance of retailers split into two groups; fast fashion and non‐fast fashion

The research shows that no statistically significant difference exists between the financial measures of the two groups. However, some objectivity is given to the claim that reduced inventory contributes to the financial health of a fast fashion retailer.

The study was limited to published financial data; for some retailers this was not available at all, for others, it was not available for each, and similar, years.

To the authors knowledge, this is the first paper to look objectively at the financial benefits associated with retailing to a fast fashion model.

Many studies have compared various characteristics of large and small business firms. For example, recent studies have documented the “small firm effect”. These articles have indicated a tendency for small companies to exhibit greater risk‐adjusted stock returns than large companies. Other research has focused on comparing the financial aspects of small and large firms. These previous studies found a positive relationship between size and liquidity as measured by the current and quick ratios. Little, however, has been written in recent years that compares the liquidity characteristics of small and large firms.

The objective of the present study is to examine the impact of corporate characteristics on human resource disclosures in Indian corporate sector.

The study investigates the annual reports of 336 Indian listed companies of NSE-500 Index. The data are collected for the latest time period which contains eight years (FY 2012–13 to 2019–2020). The data of independent variables (company characteristics) have collected from annual reports and CMIE ProwessIQ Database of the Indian listed companies. The data of human resource dissclosure index (HRDI) is collected form annual reports using content analysis approach. For analysis purpose, descriptive statistics, Pearson's correlation matrix, Two-way Least Square Dummy Variable (LSDV) regression model have been used.

The outcomes show that net sales, market capitalisation, ROTA, return on equity, quick ratio, PAR have significant positive and age, profit after tax, current ratio have significant negative effect on HRDI. On the contrary, debt-equity ratio, earnings per share, type of auditor, listing status have insignificant positive and net fixed assets, promoter's holding have insignificant negative effect on HR disclosures of the selected Indian listed companies.

The HRDI constructed in the present study helps the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) and other regulatory bodies to make some standards regarding voluntary HR disclosure practices in Indian corporate sector.

Despite the increasing interest in the role of supply chain concentration (SCC) in improving performance, its influence on firms' sustainability performance remains unexplored, as do the underlying mechanisms of this relationship. Drawing on resource dependence theory, the authors investigate the relationship between SCC and manufacturing firms' sustainability performance and the moderating roles of operational slack and information transparency.

The authors use secondary data from 3,581 manufacturing firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share stock markets from 2006 to 2020 to conduct an empirical analysis using panel data regression models.

Manufacturing firms' SCC is negatively related to sustainability performance until it reaches a certain point, where SCC positively affects sustainability performance, presenting a U-shaped relationship. In addition, operational slack represented by a quick ratio moderates the relationship between SCC and sustainability performance by flattening the curve. Operational slack represented by receivable turnover ratio moderates the relationship between SCC and sustainability performance by steepening the curve and shifting the turning point left. Information transparency strengthens the effect of SCC on the sustainability performance by steepening the curve.

This investigation provides a comprehensive view of the SCC– sustainability performance relationship.