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Crypto-asset can be traded on many different exchanges worldwide with servers located in countries with different financial characteristics and institutional surroundings. Trading volume on these servers varies considerably regarding the server’s location, even though the prices do not differ greatly. Crypto-asset markets are poorly regulated and, as such, may leave a place for potential fraudulent activities and be linked to corruption. This paper aims to examine the role of country’s institutions in attracting Bitcoin traders.

Assuming heterogeneity between countries where crypto-asset exchange servers are located, the Pool Mean Group Estimator is used.

Results indicate that, from institutional variables, corruption in the country attracts while internal and external conflicts repel investors. Additionally, the growth of global uncertainty and the decline in the local stock markets motivate investors to trade Bitcoin.

Previous research has empirically proved the importance of institutions’ quality for financial market development. This paper goes one step further and tries to empirically confirm the theoretical assumptions and investigate in detail the role of institutions in choosing servers in a particular country for Bitcoin trading.

The authors analyse the determinants of loan defaults in micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) loans in India from the survival duration perspective to draw inferences that have implications for lenders and policymakers.

The authors use the Kaplan–Meier survivor function and the Cox Proportional Hazard model to analyse 4.29 lakhs MSME loan account data originated by a large bank having a national presence from 1st January 2016 to 31st December 2020.

The estimated Kaplan–Meier survival function by various categories of loan and socio-demographic characteristics reflects heterogeneity and identifies the trigger points for actions. The authors identify the key identified default drivers. The authors find that the subsidy amount is more effective at the lower level and its effectiveness diminishes significantly beyond an optimum level. The simulated values show that the effects of rising interest rates on survival rates vary across industries and types of loans.

The identified points of inflection in the default dynamics would help banks to initiate actions to prevent loan defaults. The default drivers identified would foster more nuanced lending decisions. The study estimation of the survival rate based on the simulated values of interest rate and subsidy provides insight for policymakers.

This study is the first to investigate default drivers in MSME loans in India using micro-data. The study findings will act as signposts for the planners to guide the direction of the interest rate to be charged by banks in MSME loans, interest subvention and tailoring subsidy levels to foster sustainable growth.

This study analyses the socioeconomic impact of COVID-19 on government accountability regarding the employment of both national and migrant workforces by bringing evidence from an emerging market. In doing so, this study addresses if/how the government discharged its accountability to the public during this recent global health crisis, which started in late 2019, with its effects still being felt today.

This study is based on a close reading of the relevant news media (local and international), published research and official reports, as well as ten conversations with business managers to analyse the socioeconomic impact of COVID-19 on government accountability in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). This study draws on insights from public choice theory in trying to understand why some governments take an economic perspective while exercising accountability to their population during the pandemic.

It was found that COVID-19 led the government to pursue plans for the localization of the professions and increase employment rates among nationals vs. foreigners or migrant workers. The crisis was exploited by the government to achieve macro socio-political and economic goals, demonstrating its accountability to citizens, rather than foreign workers. This shift shows that difficult and exceptional circumstances can present opportunities for policymakers in emerging markets to achieve national policy and political aims.

This study enhances the author’s understanding of accountability during crises (i.e. crises-induced accountability) in emerging markets. The analyses presented enrich the crisis management literature by highlighting the implicit actions of national leaders that affect the lives and well-being of their constituents, especially vulnerable groups.

Health is a human right and a fundamental building block of sustainable development, economic prosperity and poverty reduction. To realize people’s right to health, evaluating the situation of the right and its determinants is necessary. This paper aims to analyze Iran’s conduct in realizing its population’s right to health.

A qualitative case study design involving a structured review of relevant laws, policy documents, reports and academic literature was undertaken. The data were collected from electronic databases and the official Web pages of the United Nations (UN) and Iran’s Government and analyzed by a framework suggested by the UN.

Iran’s law and policies intend to combat health inequalities and to provide an adequate standard of living for everyone, particularly disadvantaged groups and individuals. However, not all laws and policies protecting disadvantaged groups are adequately implemented. There are disparities in health status and access to health care among different socio-economic groups. International economic sanctions and government policies decreased people’s ability to access the necessities of life including health care. Moreover, social determinants of health, such as cultural beliefs regarding women’s rights have not been addressed sufficiently in the country’s laws.

This study includes a broad range of subjects and provides an overview of the health-care system of Iran. However, more detail is needed to describe every aspect of the right to health. It was not feasible to address them all in this paper and needs more research. In addition, as with the majority of qualitative studies, the design of the current study is subject to limitations. Firstly, the research quality of narrative reviews is dependent on the researcher’ skills and more easily can be influenced by his/her personal biases. Second, the rigor is more difficult to maintain, assess and demonstrate. Nevertheless, narrative studies often complement quantitative studies and are informative.

To fulfill the right to health, Iran should improve affordability and quality of care and the situation of the determinants of health. The gaps in people’s access to health care need to be identified, and all necessary means and scarce resources be allocated to remove access barriers and to improve the situation of disadvantaged people. The adoption of relatively low-cost targeted programs, the proper management of resources and the prevention of unnecessary costs are suggested.

Faced with contradictory outcomes in empirical studies on the relation between democracy and income inequality, this paper attempts to provide empirical relations between democracy and income inequality. In particular, the authors seek to find if any curvilinear relation exists as in the Kuznets hypothesis.

Given elusiveness in empirical relations, the authors will consider several specifications using different estimation methods such as ordinary least squares (OLS), panel data estimation and performing statistical tests to determine the best specification for the relation between income inequality and democracy. Once the authors choose the specification, then the authors will apply this specification to the different groups of data to find any meaningful implications.

Using the unbalanced panel of 136 countries spanning from 1980 to 2018, the authors found an inverse U-shaped relation, called a political Kuznets curve – income inequality increases first and then decreases later as more democracy is achieved. By quantifying the curve, the authors find that the direct impact of democracy on income inequality is small and that the incremental impact of democracy on income inequality is smaller in a semi-democracy while relatively larger in a full democracy and autocracy.

From the study’s findings, the following policy implications can be considered. First, any change in income inequality caused by democratization should not be concerning as the impact of democracy on income inequality is measured to be very small. Second, the largest factor reducing income inequality is real GDP per capita. Third, the authors find that an impact of government expenditure on income inequality is also inversely U-shaped.

Personal remittance and ready-made garments (RMG) export incomes have emerged as the largest source of foreign income for Bangladesh's economy. The study investigates their impact on income inequality and gross domestic product (GDP) as a control variable, using time-series yearly data from 1983 to 2018.

It employs the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) estimation and the Toda-Yamamoto (T-Y) causality approach. The ARDL estimation outcomes confirm a long-run association among the above variables and validate the autoregressive characteristic of the model.

Personal remittances positively contribute to reducing the income gap among the people of the society and declining income inequality. In contrast, RMG export income and economic growth contribute to further income inequality. The T-Y causality analysis follows the ARDL estimation outcomes and authenticates their robustness. It reveals a feedback relationship between remittance inflow and the Gini coefficient, unidirectional causalities from RMG export income to income inequality and economic growth to income inequality.

The finding has important policy implications to limit the income gaps between low and high-income groups by channeling incremental income to the lower-income group people. The policymakers may facilitate further international migration to attract further remittances and may upgrade the minimum wage of the RMG workers.

The study is original. As far as the authors' knowledge goes, this is a maiden attempt to investigate the impact of personal remittances and RMG export income on income disparity in the case of Bangladesh.

As the benefit of gender diversity continues to receive significant attention, a holistic investigation of its effect on corporate financial distress (CFD) is lacking. Therefore, this study examines the effects of board gender diversity, measured in different forms, such as the presence and proportion of female directors, family-affiliated female directors and the chief executive officer (CEO) gender, on CFD in Pakistan. The study also investigates the interacting effects of family-controlled (20 and 50% family-owned) companies on the association between board gender diversity and CFD.

The study applied the pooled cross-sectional logistic regression model to examine the effect of board gender diversity (presence and proportion of female directors, family-affiliated female directors and CEO gender) on CFD through a sample of 285 non-financial companies in Pakistan over the period of 2006–2017.

The results reveal that gender diversity on boards is significantly and negatively associated with CFD in Pakistan. In addition, when family ownership is 50% or more, the interacting effect of family control is found to be significant, while gender effects remain negative. The results suggest that female directors contribute to the long-term viability of companies, especially family-owned companies. Female directors are also found to be more prevalent in family-owned companies compared to their non-family counterparts.

The findings imply that female directors may efficiently manage and control all functions necessary to guarantee the company's long-term prosperity. Similarly, gender effects can outweigh the detrimental impact of family control when female directors are in reasonable numbers and of high quality in the boardroom.

The practical relevance of the findings is that female directors play a significant role on the corporate board. Thus, it is a wakeup call for Pakistani companies to recognize the critical role and uniqueness of women on the corporate ladder. Family companies can also galvanize on the uniqueness of women to improve their governance structure.

This study adds to the literature on the benefits of gender diversity in family and non-family-owned companies. Specifically, this study applied multiple measures of gender diversity and family control in a single study. In addition, the study was conducted in a country that is ranked as the second worst country in the Global Gender Gap Index 2022, implying that investigating this type of research would go a long way towards changing the minds of corporate executives and regulators about the critical role that women can play in the economy.

This paper aims to examine the friction that has surfaced since the adoption of policy measures restricting access to tramadol, a synthetic opioid, in Nigeria in 2018. Our analysis reveals how non-licensed pharmaceutical actors, who have played an integral part in the supply chain, have been criminalised for activities that have previously been sanctioned by the state. This criminalisation has given rise to friction between what is perceived as illegal by the state and what is acceptable for other actors in the tramadol economy.

The paper is based on more than 20 in-depth interviews with illicit actors and regulators in the tramadol economy in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial centre, and a review of key policy documents, media reports and popular cultural outputs on tramadol.

The paper highlights the effects of prohibitionist policies and the voices of criminalised actors to provide a contextual view of the Nigerian tramadol economy. Relying on the concepts of friction and quasilegality, we show how social relationships have become the main backbone of the illicit tramadol economy and how they enable participants to resolve the pervasive friction between illegality and social acceptability of tramadol.

This paper provides an inside understanding of the nuances of the rarely studied illicit trade in synthetic opioids and how restrictive policies that are seemingly not well thought through have created friction in the Nigerian context.

This study aims to examine the impact of intellectual capital (IC) and its three components (human, structural and relational capital) on corporation performance in the Chinese transportation industry. In addition, this study also investigates auditor characteristics (both Big-N and non-Big-N auditors) as a moderating role to examine the relationship between IC and corporate performance.

The data include 398 firm-year observations of transportation companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2011 to 2020. Value-added intellectual coefficient (VAIC) model and its modified version (MVAIC) are applied to measure IC efficiency. Finally, the fixed effects regression analysis is used to mitigate the endogeneity issue. To investigate the moderating effect of auditor characteristics, the authors divide the samples based on the clients audited by Big-4 and non-Big-4 firms.

This study reveals that IC can enhance firm performance in China’s transportation sector. Overall, findings indicate that on the whole, IC has a positive and significant impact on corporation profitability and productivity. Human capital and physical and financial assets (capital employed) play highly important roles, but structural capital has no significant impact. The authors also found that auditor characteristics play an important moderating role in the connection between IC and corporate performance. For example, the positive association between IC and corporate performance is more pronounced when Big-4 auditors audit client firms. At the same time, the authors found a negative relationship between IC and firm performance when non-Big-4 auditors audit client firms.

Managers must understand that several components of IC have a total effect on corporate financial performance. Therefore, managers can dedicate more resources to such components based on the performance outcomes to emphasize their business strategies.

This study is the first empirical analysis of the impact of IC and its components on corporation performance in the transportation sector in China, an emerging market. Previous studies mainly focus on developed countries’ high technology and financial industries sectors but the impact of IC in transportation industry largely remains unknown. Thus, the present findings contribute to IC literature by revealing several underlying mechanisms by which the components of IC help achieve good firm performance.

Grounded in dynamic capability view, this research develops a decision support model, which enables determining consistent and sufficient configurations of resilience strategies to mitigate vaccine operations and distributions (O&D) challenges and thus improve O&D performance (i.e. O&DP).

Through qualitative in-depth interviews, the authors first identified challenges and resilience strategies related to vaccine O&D. Next, using the quality function deployment technique, three quantitative case studies were performed to determine the most important challenges and resilience strategies. Finally, utilising fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, the authors determine sufficient conditions of challenges and strategies leading to improve vaccine O&DP.

The findings reveal that strategies alone are not effective instead a combination of strategies and nullification of challenges is needed to enhance vaccine O&DP. Further, the findings revealed that not only the presence of challenges, but also the lack of strategies reduces the vaccine O&DP.

The authors' findings will assist the health service decision-makers for strategizing an effective and efficient vaccination program by selecting the right combination of challenges and resilience strategies.

The authors' study develops a novel decision support model and offers significant learning for the future vaccine O&DP.