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Over the last few years, the European Central Bank (ECB) has adopted unconventional monetary policies. These measures aim to boost economic growth and increase inflation through the bond market. The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of the ECB’s quantitative easing (QE) on the investor’s behavior in the stock market.

First, the authors theoretically identify the transmission channels of the QE shocks to the stock market. Then, the authors empirically assess the financial market’s responses to QE shocks in a data-rich environment using a factor augmented VAR (FAVAR).

The results show that the ECB’s unconventional monetary policy positively affects the stock market. A QE shock leads to an increase in stock prices and a drop in the realized volatility and the implied risk premium. The authors also suggest that the ECB’s QE is transmitted to the stock market through five main channels: the liquidity, the expectation, the portfolio reallocation, the interest rates and the risk premium channels.

The findings help to better understand the behavior of stock market assets in a data-rich economic context and guide investors and policymakers in the presence of unconventional monetary tools. For instance, decision-makers and investors should consider the short-term effect of the QE interventions and the changing behavior of the financial actors over time. In addition, high stock market returns can increase risk appetite. This can lead investors to underestimate the market risk. Decision-makers and market participants should take into consideration the impact of the large injection of money through the QE, which may raise the risk of a speculative bubble in the financial market.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that incorporates a theoretical and empirical analysis to explore QE transmission to the stock market in the European context. Unlike previous studies, the authors use the shadow rate proposed by Wu and Xia (2017) to quantify the effect of the ECB’s QE in a data-rich environment. The authors also include two key risk indicators – the stock market risk premium and the realized volatility – to capture investors’ behavior in the stock market following QE shocks.

At the beginning of the 21st century, a new class of information workers, the “information have-less” has risen. This class of workers alleviates the influence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) revolution on poverty and unemployment. The purpose of this study is to investigate the presence of this class of workers in Egypt and assess the size and potential growth of this category of workers.

The study clarifies the conceptual framework of the new division of labor, in the information age. The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and Information and Decision Support Center websites provided secondary data for this study. These data are used to assess the size of “the information have less” in Egypt.

The division of work and class, in the 21st century, depends on the level of skills possessed to work with ICTs. So, class and labor nowadays could be divided into self-programmable labor (Innovators). Information have-less labor class, adding value to the economy by learning skills and presenting repetitive work. Generic labor class, who cannot work with ICTs, and work in jobs, that do not need computers or other ICTs. The study has shown that the “information have-less” labor class is present in Egypt since the beginning of the 21st century, in all its categories; entrepreneurism, the service sector and the manufacturing sector. There are approximately 50% of this labor class in the service sector and only 13% of the information have-less works in manufacturing sector despite the great opportunities that Egypt has to expand manufacturing to absorb more employment. The inclusion of information technology (IT), in all domains, has not decreased employment in Western countries but has reallocated information have-less employment toward the service sector, and there would probably be the same effect in Egypt.

The study highlights the need for Egyptian policymakers to encourage the manufacturing and service sectors to provide huge working opportunities. The Egyptian government has to change the educational policies, at all stages, to include digital learning skills so IT can be incorporated in a wide range of economic activities. Further research includes: conducting a survey to measure the contribution of the entrepreneurial part of the information have-less employment in Egypt. In addition, a model may be developed, by the researcher to examine the reallocation of employees in Egypt.

Studying employment, in Egypt, using the conceptual framework of the information age is rarely being done.

This study investigate the return and volatility spillover among agricultural commodities and emerging stock markets during various crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian-Ukrainian war.

This return and volatility spillover is estimated using Diebold and Yilmaz (2012, 2014) approach.

The results reveal the weak connectedness between agricultural commodities and emerging stock markets. Corn and sugar are the highest and lowest transmitters, respectively, whereas soya bean and coffee are the largest and smallest recipients of spillover over time. Most equity indices are the net recipient except for India, China, Indonesia, Argentina and Mexico, during the entire sample period. Most commodities are net transmitters of volatility spillover except coffee and soya bean. At the same time, major equity indices are the net recipient of the volatility spillover except for India, Indonesia, China, Argentina, Malaysia and Korea. In addition, the return and volatility spillover increase during various crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian-Ukrainian war, but the major increase in spillovers occurs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The empirical results show a weak relationship between agricultural commodities and emerging stock markets which is helpful for investors and portfolio managers in the construction and reallocation of their portfolios under different periods, most notably under COVID-19 and the Russian-Ukrainian war.

It is an original paper.

This paper aims to study the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) channels in improving local firms' productivity. Two transmission channels of knowledge spillovers are empirically investigated. The study focuses on the role of high-growth firms (HGFs) that are assumed to have a higher absorptive capacity.

A threshold regression model that considers country and sector fixed effects is applied to investigate 8525 firms across 50 sectors in 12 developing countries in the East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region.

The author's findings indicate that first, larger firms with external market linkages are more productive. Second, high-growth enterprises are powerful engines of job creation; however, the firms do not outperform other firms in terms of capacity in absorbing FDI spillovers and do not have higher productivity.

The findings highlight the necessity of rethinking public policy priorities to support firm growth. Policies to maximize the gains from FDI spillovers are discussed.

This is the first study to investigate the strength of FDI spillover channels across different sectors, and the channels' impact on the productivity of local enterprises in the EAP region. This study also explores the potential role of high-growth firms (HGFs) in this interaction via job creation and improving output growth rate.

This study aims to examine the effect of structural transformation on poverty alleviation in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries with a higher share of services as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). The study specifically focuses on the value-added share as a percentage of GDP in the agricultural, manufacturing, industrial, and service sectors using time series data from 1988 to 2019.

The study utilizes the autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) bound test framework for estimation, based on the conclusions drawn from the augmented Dickey-Fuller and Phillips–Perron unit root tests, which provide evidence of a mixed order of integration.

The result reveals that agriculture value-added (AVA), manufacturing value-added (MVA), industrial value-added (IVA), and services value-added (SVA) have a positive and significant impact on poverty alleviation in both the short and long run. However, the agriculture sector is found to be more effective in reducing poverty compared to the other sectors examined in this study. Additionally, this study challenges the notion that SSA countries have undergone an immature structural transformation. Instead, it reveals a pattern of stagnant structural transformation, as indicated by the lack of growth in the industrial and manufacturing value-added shares of GDP.

To enhance productivity and reduce poverty, SSA economies should adopt a development strategy that prioritizes heavy manufacturing and industrial sectors, leading to a transition from the agricultural to the secondary and tertiary sectors.

The study contributes to the emerging literature on structural transformation by investigating which sector is more efficient in reducing poverty in SSA countries, using the value-added share as a percentage of GDP for agricultural, manufacturing, industrial, and service sectors. The study also aims to determine if SSA countries have experienced immature structural transformation due to the growing share in the service sector.

This study examines the role of financial development (FD) in enhancing the growth effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) in emerging and developing Asia from 1996 to 2019.

The study exploits the new broad-based Financial Development Index of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and adopts panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) to perform alternative empirical models for a multidimensional analysis of the FD threshold effect in the growth–FDI nexus.

The results show two thresholds of FD mediating the nonlinear effect of FDI on growth. FD beyond a certain level will enhance the growth effect of FDI, but very high levels of FD will not induce foreign investment to benefit economic growth in emerging and developing Asian economies. The impact of financial institutions on the FDI–growth link is stronger than that of financial markets. Besides, FDI’s effect on growth has an inverted-U shape conditional on financial depth, whereas it is positively associated with the accessibility and efficiency of the financial system.

These results suggest policy implications for emerging and developing Asian countries, emphasizing the other side of “too much finance” and the potential for improvement in the access to and efficiency of the financial system to boost the effects of FDI and FD in the growth of these economies.

The study is the first multifaceted investigation into the influence of FD on the growth effect of FDI. Beyond the previous empirical evidence showing only the impact of credit from banking sector, this study shows different mediating effects of different financial sectors and three dimensions of financing (depth, access and efficiency). The study suggests essential implications for the region in adjusting long-run policies to enhance the FDI–FD–growth link.

The present study aimed to examine the effect of received remittance inflows on the price level ratio of the purchasing power parity conversion factor to the market exchange rate in 36 developed and developing countries from 2004 to 2020.

The panel data conducted a comparative analysis and used panel least squares, regression with Driscoll-Kraay standard errors of fixed effect, random effect, feasible generalised least squares and maximum likelihood robust least squares to overcome the heterogeneity issue. Furthermore, the two-step difference generalised method of moments to overcome the endogeneity issue. Diagnostic tests were used to increase robustness.

In the studied countries, there was a statistically significant negative relationship between received remittance inflows and the price-level ratio of the purchasing power parity conversion factor to the market exchange rate. This relationship explains why remittance flows depreciate the real exchange rate. The study’s results also indicated that attracting investments can improve the quality of institutions despite high tax rates, leading to low tax revenue.

The current study findings enrich the understanding of policies of how governments should minimise tariff rates on capital imports and introduce export-oriented incentive programmes. The study also revealed that Dutch disease can occur due to differences in the demand structure and manufacturing development policy.

This paper investigates the impact of investor attention on the COVID-19 concept stocks in China's stock market from the perspectives of the macroeconomy, the stock market and the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the basis of controlling the time effects and individual fixed effects, this paper studies the impact of investor attention on the COVID-19 concept stocks in China's stock market through a set of fixed effect panel data models. Among them, investor attention focuses on macroeconomy, stock market and the COVID-19 pandemic, respectively, while stock indicators cover return, volatility and turnover. In addition, this paper also examines the heterogeneity influence of investor attention on the COVID-19 concept stocks from the perspective of time and stock classification.

Findings indicate that the attention to macroeconomy does not have a statistically significant effect on the return, unlike the attention to stock market and COVID-19 incident. Three types of investor attention have significant positive effects on the volatility and turnover rate. During the outbreak of the domestic epidemic, the impact of investor attention was significantly higher than that during the outbreak of the epidemic overseas. A finer-grained analysis shows that the attention to stock market has significantly increased the return of preventive type and treatment type stocks, while diagnostic-related stocks have been most affected by the attention to COVID-19 incident.

The major limitation of this work is the construction of investor attention. Although Baidu index is widely used, investor attention can be assessed more accurately based on more unstructured data. In addition, the effect of the COVID-19 can also be investigated in a longer time domain. Further research can be combined with the dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic to more comprehensively evaluate its impact on the stock market.

The research proves that investor attention plays an important role in stock pricing and provides empirical evidence on the behavioral foundations of the conceptual sector of the stock market under uncertainty. It also has practical implications for regulators and investors interested in conducting accurate asset allocation and risk assessment.

This study investigates the connection between corporate governance and zombie firm’s exit time.

With a sample of 2,794 French zombie firms, the analysis focuses on four aspects of corporate governance: board size (BS), managerial ownership (MO), director turnover (DT) and ownership concentration, using tobit regression.

Dimensions of corporate governance have an important role in determining zombie firms’ exit time. MO and ownership concentration increase zombie firm exit time, whereas larger BSs and DT reduce it.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to include corporate governance as a characteristic relevant to zombie firms’ exit time. It provides new insights on why some zombie firms remain in the market longer than expected.

This paper presents a review of literature, aimed at analyzing and understanding the nexus of knowledge on the topic of government budgetary responses to COVID-19 and identifying gaps for future research directions on crisis budgeting.

A systematic literature review approach was conducted by considering scientific journal articles written in English and published through 2020–2022. The databases used for the literature search in this paper were Scopus and Web of Science, resulting in 41 articles for final review.

This review found that in a crisis, budgetary responses were greatly determined by perceived uncertainties. In the case of the COVID-19 crisis, governments seemed to prioritize economic recovery. While many studies have documented budgetary responses to the crisis, most were written in the beginning of the crisis through documentary content analysis, leaving significant research gaps. Thus, this review offers directions for future research concerning governmental response to perceived uncertainty, logic behind governments' budgeting strategies, sustainable development principles within crisis budgeting and the prioritization of economic considerations in a health crisis.

This paper is one of the first to present insights into the state of research regarding the topic of government budgeting during the COVID-19 crisis. In addition, it provides insights from the literature for anticipating future shocks and crises, along with directions for future researchers in developing their research agenda.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2023-0057