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This paper aims to empirically investigate the factors attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows into emerging economies.

This study uses secondary data from the World Bank and the Global State of Democracy Indices of 16 West African countries (WACs) over the period from 1989 to 2018. Fixed- and random-effects econometric regression models are used to assess the nexus between 12 macroeconomic indicators (including political risk and cultural factors) and FDI inflows into WACs.

The critical drivers of FDI inflows into WACs are the richness of natural resources, market size or gross domestic product (GDP), imports and exports of goods and services, trade openness and the currency's strength as measured by the exchange rate. The result also reveals that French-speaking countries attract more FDI than other English-speaking countries. The previously cited determinants of FDI, such as infrastructural development, inflation, tax and political stability, are insignificant in determining FDI inflows into WACs.

This study uncovers the critical drivers explaining the FDI inflows into WACs, where FDI accounts for 39% of external finance. The study's contribution is that Francophone WACs attract more FDI than Anglophone WACs. The most important drivers of FDI are abundant natural resources, GDP, imports, exports, trade openness and exchange rate.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between fiscal policy (tax revenues and government expenditure) and economic happiness. The panel data are used from 2012 to 2016 for 18 countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The study adopted the Barro (1990) model of endogeneity growth to characterize the relationship between fiscal policy and economic happiness. The study estimated the model by using the pooled ordinary least squares method, the fixed effects method and the random-effects method. In addition, the study used the dynamic estimate of this relationship rather than the conventional static estimate through the generalized method of moments’ method. This leads to overcoming the endogeneity problem between the dependent variable and the independent variables.

The main findings indicated that there is a negative and statistically significant relationship between nondistortionary taxes and economic happiness. Also, there is no relationship between public expenditure and economic happiness, whether productive or nonproductive. The results confirmed a positive and significant relationship between other revenues and economic happiness. The current study recommended the diversification of other public revenue sources to increase its contribution to public expenditure financing and the restructuring of the tax system, particularly nondistortionary taxes. These taxes must be replaced by other revenues or by distortionary taxes to increase economic happiness.

The research represents a strong starting base that can help researchers to conduct more studies on economic happiness by using different measures and comparing their results to find out the determinants of happiness. The relationship between economic happiness and fiscal policy with its different aspects requires more studies, especially the relationship between taxes and economic happiness in our region. The study of the relationship between public expenditure and economic happiness according to economic activities can guide decision-makers to direct the expenditure toward economic activities that achieve the happiness of their citizens. Enriching this study requires the availability of fiscal data for the entire MENA region for longer periods, which allow us to divide the countries of the region into petroleum and nonpetroleum countries, but the scarcity of data is one of the limitations of the study.

The governments of MENA countries should diversify other public revenue sources to increase the financing public expenditure by the expense of tax revenues, especially nondistortionary taxes, which would increase the economic happiness of their citizens.

This study is one of the rare studies that investigate the relationship between fiscal policy and economic happiness at the global level. This study contributed to filling the gap of this issue in the MENA region and enriching global literature through the experience of the MENA region. Moreover, this study investigated all aspects of fiscal policy, in contrast to other studies that focused on one of its aspects. The weakness in these studies is because of the lack of correlation between the sources of revenues and the face of their spending.

This paper examines the relationship between a prime contractor's financial health and its mergers and acquisitions (M&A) spending in the defense industry. It aims to provide models that give the United States Department of Defense (DoD) indications of future M&A activity, informing decision-makers and contributing to ensuring competitive markets that benefit the consumer.

The study uses panel data regression models on 40 companies between 1985 and 2021. The company's financial health is assessed using industry-standard financial ratios (i.e. measures of profitability, efficiency, solvency and liquidity) while controlling for economic factors such as national productivity, defense budgets and firm size.

The results show a significant relationship between efficiency and M&A spending, indicating that companies with lower efficiency tend to spend more on M&As. However, there was no significant relationship between M&A spending and a company's profitability or solvency. These results were consistent with previous research and the study's hypotheses for profitability and solvency. However, the effect of liquidity was the opposite of the expected result, possibly due to the defense industry's different view on liquidity compared to previous research.

The paper provides insights into the relationship between a prime contractor's financial health and its M&A spending, a topic with limited research. The findings can inform policymakers and regulators on the industrial base's future M&A activity, ensuring competitive markets that benefit the consumer.

This paper aims to investigate empirically whether Sukuk financing is boosting the economic growth in Southeast Asia within the framework of the endogenous growth model.

This paper applied dynamic panel one-step system generalized method of moments as an optimal estimation approach to investigate the impact of Sukuk financing on economic growth in Southeast Asia spanning from 2013Q4–2019Q3. Sukuk financing was proxied by the total issued Sukuk holdings, while economic growth was proxied by gross domestic product. The sample covered all full-fledged Islamic financial institutions in the most developed Sukuk financial markets countries in Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei).

The findings demonstrated that Sukuk financing is boosting economic growth in Southeast Asia, which reflects the significant role of the Islamic financial markets of Sukuk as a vital contributor to economic growth.

This paper would fill the literature by investigating the link between Sukuk financing and economic growth in Southeast Asia within the framework of the endogenous growth model, as the outcome of this paper serves as a guide for financial researchers, decision-makers and policymakers to improve the Sukuk market globally as an alternative financing source for the best contribution to economic growth.

This paper is the first that investigates empirically the link between Sukuk financing and economic growth in Southeast Asia with a new theoretical context of the endogenous growth model to gain robust information about this link.

The effects of integrated reporting quality (IRQ) have been debated in increasing empirical studies. Several IRQ measures, different theoretical approaches and multiple contexts have been adopted and investigated, leading to mixed results. By using the meta-analytic technique, this study aims to contribute to the accounting literature, reconciling the conflicting results on the effects of IRQ and providing objective conclusions to complement narrative literature reviews.

A sample of 45 empirical papers from 2013 to 2022, with 653 effect sizes, was used to assess the effects associated with IRQ. The papers were clustered into five groups (market reaction, financial performance, cost of capital, financial analysts’ properties and managerial decisions) based on the different consequences of IRQ investigated in the primary studies. A random-effects meta-regression model was used to explore all sources of heterogeneity together.

The meta-regression results confirm that IRQ positively influences firms’ market valuation and financial performance and hampers opportunistic managerial behaviour by improving corporate transparency, mitigating information asymmetry and encouraging accountability. Moreover, differences in the study characteristics affect the strength of the relationship object of interest.

Through meta-analysis, this study provides a broader overview of the effects of IRQ by enhancing the generalisability of the findings. The results also pave the way for additional evidence on the outcome variables affected by the quality of integrated disclosure.

Our study was designed to investigate the longitudinal trajectories of student leader development capacities in a sample of students enrolled in multiple leadership-focused courses across several semesters. Our goal was to assess the degree to which course enrollment was associated with growth over the time that students engage as undergraduates in academic leadership programs, and if so, to assess the shape and speed of capacity change.

We utilized a multilevel intra-individual modeling approach assessing students’ motivation to lead, leader self-efficacy, and leadership skills across multiple data collection points for students in a campus major or minor focused on leadership studies. We compared an unconditional model, a fixed effect model, a random intercept model, a random slope model, and a random slope and intercept model to determine the shape of score trajectories. Our approach was not to collect traditional pre-test and post-test data – choosing to collect data only at the beginning of each semester – to reduce time cues typically inherent within pre-test and post-test collections.

Our results strongly suggested that individual students differ greatly in the degree to which they report the capacity to lead when initially enrolling in their first class. Surprisingly, the various models were unable to predict a pattern of longitudinal leader development through repeated course enrollment in our sample.

Our investigation employed statistical methods that are not often utilized in leadership education quantitative research, and also included a data collection effort designed to avoid a linear pre-test/post-test score comparison.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role that different financial sources and financial specialization have on private research and development (R&D) activity in OECD countries.

The authors developed several panel regressions choosing as a final model a two-way random effects regression to understand which funding sources are related to the R&D expenditure, and how financial specialization has links to the private portion of R&D aggregated expenditure. The authors include data from the years 2000 to 2016 for OECD countries.

The results reinforce the critical role that stock markets have in enhancing private R&D and that bond markets have an inverse relationship with private R&D national expenditures. The authors do not find evidence of a link between bank sources and private R&D. Specialized financial systems (banking or market) support innovation in a better way than a mixed arrangement of those two systems.

The findings of this study have considerable policy implications. Policymakers need to be aware of these results, given that some variables related to financial markets, seems to boost the inputs for R&D. In the long term, this could be a signal that national and regional systems of innovation need a broad view of the factors hampering scientific activity, and also a signal that there are other ways to impact the results of the complex innovation activity through the development of stronger financial systems backing up national systems of innovation.

The authors found that the long discussion about the financial system that a country has to choose to enhance growth with R&D&I may have been misleading the public policy. The findings show that rather than a bank or a stock market financial system, economies looking to boost R&D&I, must specialize in one of the two systems, deepen these and generate the appropriate policies to promote science, technology and innovation using those financial markets.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the listed firms' debt level and performance on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) during a five-year period.

This study uses pooled ordinary least squares regression and fixed- and random-effects models to analyse a cross-sectional sample of 30 Pakistani companies operating in the automobile, cement and sugar sectors during 2013–2017 (N = 150).

The results indicate that both short- and long-term debt have negative and significant impacts on firm performance in profitability. This suggests that agency issues may lead to a high-debt policy, resulting in lower performance. However, both sales growth and firm size have positive effects on the profitability of non-financial sector companies.

This study suggests that when debt financing significantly and negatively influences firm profitability, company owners and managers should focus on finding a satisfactory debt level. However, this study is limited to the automobile, cement and sugar sectors of Pakistan. Future studies could address other sectors, such as textiles, fertilizers and pharmaceuticals.

This study focusses on enhancing the existing empirical knowledge of debt financing's influence on the PSX's major sectors' profitability.

The economic and financial literature dealing with the subject of bank profitability has often been based in the measurement of banking results on three main indicators: ROA, ROE and MIN. This article aims to determine and analyze the different determinants that influence bank profitability and to identify the impact of these determinants on the profitability of Moroccan banks.

For this purpose, a fixed individual effect model was adopted for the case of six Moroccan banks during the period of study from 1997 to 2018. The authors carried out their estimates at three levels according to three categories of profitability factors: bank factors, factors of the banking system and macroeconomic factors.

The empirical findings show that Moroccan banks react on their size to boost their performance, which further explains the continued expansion of Moroccan banking networks. The authors confirm that Moroccan banks have not yet reached a level of size that will be detrimental to their performance. Therefore, the authors can conclude that the big Moroccan banks do not follow the concept of economy of scale. The effects of the variation in the level of economic growth as well as the evolution of the level of inflation on the performance of Moroccan banks are not significant.

The authors’ findings and results have some important originality and value. Primarily, these results would consist of better helping the State, bankers, and bank managers to better understand the various determinants of bank profitability. The results may also help to better examine the effect of each factor, whether internal or external, on banks' bottom line.

There is abundant literature analyzing the determinants of banks’ profitability through its main component: the net interest margin. Some of these determinants are suggested by seminal theoretical models and subsequent expansions. Others are ad-hoc selections. Up to now, there are no studies assessing these models from a Bayesian model uncertainty perspective. This paper aims to analyze this issue for the EU-15 countries for the period 2008-2014, which mainly corresponds to the Great Recession years.

It follows a Bayesian variable selection approach to analyze, in a first step, which variables of those suggested by the literature are actually good predictors of banks’ net interest margin. In a second step, using a model selection approach, the authors select the model with the best fit. Finally, the paper provides inference and quantifies the economic impact of the variables selected as good candidates.

The results widely support the validity of the determinants proposed by the seminal models, with only minor discrepancies, reinforcing their capacity to explain net interest margin disparities also during the recent period of restructuring of the banking industry.

The paper is, to the best of the knowledge, the first one following a Bayesian variable selection approach in this field of the literature.