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The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to recount the scale, composition and agents of red capital in Hong Kong; second, to conceptualise the peculiarity of red capital; and third, to explore the impact of red capital on the political and economic institutional setup in Hong Kong.

The paper consults the comparative capitalism literature to conceptualise the phenomenon of red capital. The paper gathers data from Hong Kong Stock Exchange and indices to provide an overview of red capital. Furthermore, the case study of 2016 Legislative Election is deployed to investigate the mechanisms of red capital’s influence. The paper concludes with a summary of how red capital may challenge the validity of the “One Country, Two Systems” framework.

This paper argues that red capital replicates China’s state–capital nexus in Hong Kong and morphs the game of competition in favour of Chinese nationally controlled companies. In tandem with the emerging visibility of the party–state in Hong Kong’s economic sphere, the authors observe attempts of Chinese economic actors to compromise democratic institutions, deemed obstacles to state control.

This paper is the first attempt to systematically embed the discussion of red capital into comparative capitalism literature. This study provides conceptual tools to examine why red capital could pose a threat to liberal societies such as Hong Kong. Through this paper, we introduce a novel research agenda to scrutinise capital from authoritarian states and investigate how the capital is changing the political infrastructure shaped by liberal principles and values.

Amidst the backdrop of a wide array of structural developments that have revolutionized the competitive landscape of Indian commercial banking, this paper aims to empirically examine the role of two external monitoring mechanisms – competition and concentration on financial stability and further highlights the significance of bank-level heterogeneity in the nexus.

The study uses the Lerner index, defined through a translog specification, as a measure of market power. A system generalized method of moments technique accounts for the dynamic associations among the competition-concentration-stability nexus. The study further examines the moderating effect of ownership, size and capitalization on the nexus. The study also uses the Boone indicator and comments on the competition-bank stability relationship after controlling for bank governance.

The findings indicate that banks are less stable in a more competitive and higher concentrated environment. Exploring bank-level heterogeneity, first, the authors report that as competition increases, state-owned banks have greater incentives to undertake risky activities than private and foreign banks, which point to implicit sovereign guarantees that characterize the former. Second, the authors document an adverse influence of competition on the soundness of larger banks consistent with the “too-big-to-fail” assertion. Third, results corroborate the disciplinary role of regulatory capital and lend support to stricter capital norms under Basel III in a more competitive environment.

This paper is perhaps the first to capture competition and concentration in a single model; to reconcile conflicting evidence on competition-risk nexus; to shed light on the joint effect of competition and Basel accords for Indian banks.

The goal of this study is to investigate the nexus among TFP (total factor productivity), IT (information technology) capital accumulation, skills and key plant variables of 34 Indian industries for the period of 2009–2015.

Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) data series are extracted and formulated using Microsoft SQL server. The authors employ Wooldridge (2009) technique to estimate productivity. To investigate the linkages among productivity, IT, skills and key plant variables, the authors estimate specifications using system generalized method of moments (sys-GMM). Advanced estimation techniques such as Heckman two-step process, probit equations, inverse Mills ratio and panel cointegration are applied to overcome problems of nonstationarity, omitted variables, endogeneity and reverse causality.

The results indicate that the level of IT capital influences the TFP of Indian industries, so does the level of skilled workers. The outcome suggests that intermediate capital goods, location and ownership type enable the strength of IT capital and that in turn boosts productivity. The authors fail to find any impact of regional factors and contractual labor on IT capital and productivity. While medium-level gender diversity is statistically significant to influence productivity, however, no complementarities exist between gender diversity and IT capital accumulation. The results also indicate that IT demand of Indian industries is sensitive to availability of skilled workforce, fuel and electricity and access to short-term funding.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the nexus among TFP, IT capital accumulation, skills and organizational factors using ASI unit level data. Besides this, the paper offers two more novelties. First, it uses Wooldridge (2009) technique to estimate productivity, which is used by a handful of studies in the context of India. Second, the study identifies factors that impact productivity growth, IT demand and its adoption in Indian industries and thus contributes to growth and development literature.

Motivated by the agency theory, this study aims to empirically examine the nexus between board attributes and a firm’s financing decisions of non-financial listed firms in Palestine and how the previous relationship is moderated and shaped by the level of gender diversity.

Multiple regression analysis on a panel data was used. Further, we applied three different approaches of static panel data “pooled OLS, fixed effect and random effect.” Fixed-effects estimator was selected as the optimal and most appropriate model. In addition, to control for the potential endogeneity problem and to profoundly analyze the study data, the authors perform the one-step system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator. Dynamic panel GMM specification was superior in generating robust findings.

The findings clearly unveil that all explanatory variables in the study model have a significant influence on the firm’s financing decisions. Moreover, the results report that the impact of board size and board independence are more positive under conditions of a high level of gender diversity, whereas the influence of CEO duality on the firm’s leverage level turned from negative to positive. In a nutshell, gender diversity moderates the effect of board structure on a firm’s financing decisions.

This study was restricted to one institutional context (Palestine); therefore, the results reflect the attributes of the Palestinian business environment. In this vein, it is possible to generate different findings in other countries, particularly in developed markets.

The findings of this study can draw responsible parties and policymakers’ attention in developing countries to introduce and contextualize new mechanisms that can lead to better monitoring process and help firms in attracting better resources and establishing an optimal capital structure. For instance, entities should mandate a minimum quota for the proportion of women incorporation in boardrooms.

This study provides empirical evidence on the moderating role of gender diversity on the effect of board structure on firm’s financing decisions, something that was predominantly neglected by the earlier studies and has not yet examined by ancestors. Thereby, to protrude nuanced understanding of this novel and unprecedented idea, this study thoroughly bridges this research gap and contributes practically and theoretically to the existing corporate governance–capital structure literature.

The threshold regression framework is used to examine the effect of foreign direct investment on growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The growth literature is awash with divergent evidence on the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth. Although the FDI–growth nexus has been studied in diverse ways, very few studies have examined the relationship within the framework of threshold analysis. Furthermore, even where this framework has been adopted, none of the previous studies has comprehensively examined the FDI–growth nexus in the broader SSA. In this paper, within the standard panel and threshold regression framework, the problem of determining the growth impact of FDI is revisited.

Six variables are used as thresholds – inflation, initial income, population growth, trade openness, financial market development and human capital, and the analysis is based on a large panel data set that comprises 45 SSA countries for the years 1985–2013.

The results of this study show that the direct impact of FDI on growth is largely ambiguous and inconsistent. However, under the threshold analysis, it is evident that FDI accelerates economic growth when SSA countries have achieved certain threshold levels of inflation, population growth and financial markets development. This evidence is largely invariant qualitatively and is robust to different empirical specifications. FDI enhances growth in SSA when inflation and private sector credit are below their threshold levels while human capital and population growth are above their threshold levels.

The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, the paper streamlines the threshold analysis of FDI–growth nexus to focus on countries in SSA – previous studies on FDI-growth nexus in SSA are country-specific and time series–based (see Tshepo, 2014; Raheem and Oyınlola, 2013 and Bende-Nabende, 2002). This paper provides a panel analysis and considers a broader set of up to 45 SSA countries. Such a broad set of SSA countries had never been considered in the literature. Second, the paper expands on available threshold variables to include two new important macroeconomic variables, population growth and inflation which, though are important absorptive capacities but, until now, had not been used as thresholds in the FDI–growth literature. The rationale for including these variables as thresholds stems from the evidence of an empirical relationship between population growth and economic growth, see Darrat and Al-Yousif (1999), and between inflation and economic growth, see Kremer et al. (2013).

Because of growing energy consumption and increasing absolute CO₂ emissions, the recent calibrations about the environmental sustainability across the globe have mandated to achieve the minimal energy consumption through employing energy-efficient technology. This study aims to estimate linkage between simple measure of energy efficiency indicator that is reciprocal of energy intensity and total factor productivity (TFP) in case of Indian paper industry for 21 major states. In addition, the study incorporates the other control variables like labour productivity, capital utilization and structure of paper industry to scrutinize their likely impact on energy efficiency performance of the industry.

To derive the plausible estimates of TFP, the study applies the much celebrated Levinsohn and Petrin (2003) methodology. Using the regional level data for the period 2001-2013, the study employs instrumental variable-generalized method of moments (GMM-IV) technique to examine the nature of relationship among the variables involved in the analysis.

An elementary examination of energy intensity shows that not all states are equally energy intensive. States like Goa, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Tamil Nadu are less energy intensive, whereas Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Assam and Punjab are most energy-intensive states on the basis of their state averages over the whole study period. The results estimated through GMM-IV show that increasing level of TFP is associated with lower level of energy per unit of output. Along this better skills and capacity utilization are also found to have positive impact on energy efficiency performance of industry. However, the potential heterogeneity within the structure of industry itself is found responsible for its higher energy intensity.

States should ensure and undertake substantial investment projects in the research and development of energy-efficient technology and that targeted allocations could be reinforced for more fruitful results. Factors aiming at improving the labour productivity should be given extra emphasis together with capital deepening and widening, needed for energy conservation and environmental sustainability. Given the dependence of structure of paper industry on the multitude of factors like regional inequality, economic growth, industrial structure and the resource endowment together with the issues of fragmented sizes, poor infrastructure and availability and affordability of raw materials etc., states should actively promote the coordination and cooperation among themselves to reap the benefits of technological advancements through technological spill overs. In addition, owing to their respective state autonomies, state governments should set their own energy saving targets by taking into account the respective potentials and opportunities for the different industries. Despite the requirement of energy-efficient innovations, however, the cons of technological advancements and the legal frameworks on the employment structure and distributional status should be taken care of before their adoption and execution.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that empirically examines the linkage between energy efficiency and TFP in case of Indian paper industry. The application of improved methods like Levinsohn and Petrin (2003) to derive the TFP measure and the use of GMM-IV to account for potential econometric problems like that of endogeneity will again add to the novelty of study.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the interactive effect of human capital in financial development–economic growth nexus. Relative to the quantity-based measure of enrolment rates, the main aim was to determine how quality of human capital proxied by pupil–teacher ratio influences the relationship between domestic financial sector development and overall economic growth.

Data are obtained from the World Development Indicators of the World Bank for 29 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period 1980–2014. The analyses were conducted using the system generalised method of moments within the endogenous growth framework while controlling for country-specific and time effects. The author also follows Papke and Wooldridge procedure in examining the long-run estimates of the variables of interest.

The key finding is that, while both human capital and financial development unconditionally promotes growth in both the short and long run, results from the interactive terms suggest that, irrespective of the measure of finance, financial sector development largely spurs growth on the back of quality human capital. This finding is also confirmed by the marginal and net effects where the interactive effect of pupil–teacher ratio and indicators of finance are consistently huge relative to the enrolment. Statistically, the results are robust to model specification.

While it is laudable for SSA countries to increase access to education, it is equally more crucial to increase the supply of teachers at the same time improving on the limited teaching and learning materials. Indeed, there are efforts to develop rather low levels of the financial sector owing to its unconditional growth effects. Beyond the direct benefit of finance, however, higher growth effect of finance is conditioned on the quality level of human capital. The outcome of this study should therefore reignite the recognition of the complementarity role of human capital and finance in economic growth process.

The study makes significant contributions to existing finance–growth literature in so many ways: first, the auhor extend the literature by empirically examining how different measures of human capital shape the finance–economic growth nexus. Through this the author is able to bring a different perspective in the literature highlighting the role of countries’ human capital stock in mediating the impact of financial deepening on economic growth. Second, the author makes a more systematic attempt to evaluate the relative importance of finance and human capital in growth process while controlling for several ancillary variables.

The purpose of this study is to examine the interactive role of human capital development (HCD) in foreign aid-growth relations in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa countries from 1985–2019.

The study used panel data that cut across all countries in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa collected from The World Bank’s Development Indicators. The data were analysed using Bai and Ng panel unit root idiosyncratic cross-sectional tests and the system generalised method of moments (SGMM).

The study found that foreign aid and HCD have negative impacts on economic growth. Fortunately, the interaction of human capital with foreign aid reduces the extent to which foreign aid impedes economic growth. The presumption is that South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa economies had not reaped the potential growth effect of foreign aid inflows due to high illiteracy rates and weak social capacities. The peculiarity of these regions hinders the absorptive capacity to transform positive externality associated with foreign aid into sizeable economic prosperity.

It is imperative for South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa countries to not depend on foreign aid; instead, the strategic action by policymakers should be to developing sustainable social capacities with HCD as the centre-piece.

The highpoint of this study is its inter-regional approach and the interplay between human capital and foreign aid using the second generation panel unit root estimator and the SGMM approaches.

Under the global value chain (GVC) approach, this paper aims to analyze how domestic suppliers on the periphery of the automotive industry are affected by their relationship with foreign multinationals.

A case study with primary data collected from foreign multinationals operating in the Mexican automotive industry was used to analyze their relationship with domestic suppliers.

The evolution of the suppliers has been characterized by improved quality and added value in their products and more asset-intensive, efficient processes. This evolution has been driven by improvement in production capabilities and investment in new equipment by domestic suppliers and facilitated by knowledge transfer from foreign multinationals. However, it has not involved the acquisition of innovation capabilities or the internationalization of production activities. This has limited their position on the first levels of the value chain and their global presence, which are essential aspects when climbing the industry value chain to lead some activities at a global level. At the same time, most of these suppliers have become strategic and have a greater dependence on foreign multinationals. This poses a dilemma for domestic firms, as the relationship with these multinationals becomes more intense and dependent and at the same time reduces the possibility of leading activities in the value chain.

The paper analyzes the impact on domestic suppliers of their relationships with foreign multinationals, integrating traditional product, process and functional upgrading and new elements, in particular, participation in the GVC and dependence on multinationals.

This study seeks to understand the nexus between intellectual capital and profitability of healthcare firms in India with interaction effects.

Relevant data were extracted from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE)'s Prowess database for a period of ten years 2009–2018 for a sample of 84 selected firms from the healthcare industry. This study uses value added intellectual coefficient (VAIC) and modified value added intellectual coefficient (MVAIC) as a measure of intellectual capital. Further, the study employs panel regression techniques to explore the relationship between intellectual capital and profitability.

The empirical findings reveal that the intellectual capital coefficient of healthcare firms in India averages 2.7757. It is also observed that a majority of the healthcare firms' intellectual capital coefficient is below the industry average. From the regression analysis, it is evident that the intellectual capital coefficient is positively related to the profitability of healthcare firms in India. As far as the components of intellectual capital coefficient are concerned, the capital employed coefficient (CEC) is the only component driving the profitability of healthcare firms in India. A further introduction of interaction terms improves model explainability and moderates the impact of the predictor variable on the response variable. Furthermore, it is observed that the intellectual capital coefficient of the healthcare industry is immune to changes in political regimes in India.

The findings reveal that intellectual capital is an important driver of corporate performance, thus healthcare firms in developing economies like India need to enhance their intellectual potential. Therefore, corporates and governments in developing economies should stimulate investments in developing intellectual capital for enhanced corporate performance and economic growth. Thus, this study might be used as a reference by policymakers while drafting the future policy for the development of intellectual capital in general and healthcare sector specifically.

This is among the first few studies to explore such an empirical relationship for healthcare firms in India and among the few studies of this kind across the globe. It also makes novel contributions in considering interaction variables and seeking the consistency of results across different political regimes. However, the study examines one nation and one industry; thus, the generalisation of findings requires caution.