Search results

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings and leverage manipulation and the moderating effects of internal and external supervision.

The authors draw on a sample of Chinese non-financial A-share-listed firms from 2013 to 2020 to explore the effect of ESG ratings on leverage manipulation. Robustness and endogeneity tests confirm the validity of the regression results.

ESG ratings inhibit leverage manipulation by improving social reputation, information transparency and financing constraints. This effect is weakened by internal supervision, captured by the ratio of institutional investor ownership, and strengthened by external supervision, captured by the level of marketization. The effect is stronger in non-state-owned firms and firms in non-polluting industries. The governance dimension of ESG exhibits the strongest effect, with comprehensive environmental governance ratings and social governance ratings also suppressing leverage manipulation.

Firms should strive to cultivate environmental awareness, fulfil their social responsibilities and enhance internal governance, which may help to strengthen the firm’s sustainability orientation, mitigate opportunistic behaviours and ultimately contribute to high-quality firm development. The top managers of firms should exercise self-restraint and take the initiative to reduce leverage manipulation by establishing an appropriate governance structure and sustainable business operation system that incorporate environmental and social governance in addition to general governance.

Policymakers and regulators should formulate unified guidelines with comprehensive criteria to improve the scope and quality of ESG information disclosure and provide specific guidance on ESG practice for firms. Investors should incorporate ESG ratings into their investment decision framework to lower their portfolio risk.

This study contributes to the literature in four ways. Firstly, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is among the first to show that high ESG ratings may mitigate firms’ opportunistic behaviours. Secondly, it identifies the governance factor of leverage manipulation from the perspective of firms’ subjective sustainability orientation. Thirdly, it demonstrates that the relationship between ESG ratings and leverage manipulation varies with the level of internal and external supervision. Finally, it highlights the importance of governance in guaranteeing the other two dimensions’ roles by decomposing overall ESG.

This study aims to examine the influence of ownership structure and board composition on the probability and intensity of stock repurchases. The study’s sample comprises 3,744 firm-year observations, consisting of 53 repurchasing firms with 96 firm-year observations from 2008 to 2019.

Probit and fixed-effects regression models are used to obtain empirical results. Moreover, a probit model with a continuous endogenous regressor (IV-probit) and an instrumental variable method with two-stage least squares (IV-2SLS) estimation are used to address endogeneity.

Corporations with high family or state ownership tend to inhibit stock repurchases to hoard excess free cash flow, supporting agency theory. Conversely, firms with high board independence tend to repurchase their stocks at least once to distribute free cash flows to shareholders, confirming agency theory. Nonetheless, corporations with more female directors on the board or CEO duality tend to conduct stock repurchases at least once but do not repurchase stocks with high values. Interestingly, more female directors on the board may send false signals about undervalued stocks.

This is the first study to reveal that firms with CEO duality repurchase their stocks at least once but avoid repurchasing shares with high values. It is also the first study to explore whether women on a board may cause false signaling about undervalued stocks. Furthermore, this study reveals that family and state ownership are potential determinants of stock repurchases in countries with high ownership concentration. This is the first study to address this issue in Thailand.

The purpose of this study is to explore the effect and mechanism of the digital economy’s influence on the binary margin of agricultural exports.

Based on the theoretical analysis of the mechanism of the digital economy’s influence on the binary margin of agricultural exports, this study empirically examines the effect and mechanism of the digital economy’s influence on the binary margin of agricultural exports based on China’s customs export data from 2011 to 2016.

The relevant findings are threefold. (1) The digital economy significantly improves the binary margin of agricultural exports, and its effect on the intensive margin is stronger than that on the expansive margin. After the expansive margin is subdivided, the effects on the three sub-variables of the expansive margin are in the following order: old products exported to new markets > new products exported to old markets > new products exported to new markets. (2) The heterogeneity analysis reveals that the digital economy has a stronger role in promoting the binary margin of exports for enterprises in the eastern region, high-income countries as the destination of exports and state-owned enterprises. (3) Mechanism analysis shows that the digital economy promotes the binary margin of agricultural exports by reducing trade costs and intensifying market competition.

First, in terms of research perspective, although there are some studies on the impact of the digital economy on export trade in existing literature, the research objects mainly focus on manufacturing enterprises. In fact, agricultural trade is susceptible to natural conditions and seasonal factors, and countries may impose more SPS measures and TBT measures on agricultural trade due to risk considerations. The relationship between the digital economy and agricultural trade also has its own characteristics, but there are few research studies in this area. At present, only Liu and Gao (2022), based on the data of total imports and exports of different agricultural products from 2004 to 2018, have established a vector auto-regressive model to empirically analyse the heterogeneous dynamic impact of the digital economy on the trade volume of agricultural products. In addition, Ma and Guo (2023) conducted an empirical test on the total effect, regional heterogeneity and threshold effect of the digital economy on agricultural export trade based on China’s provincial panel data from 2011 to 2020. Therefore, under the new circumstances of continuous integration of digital technology and agriculture, this study interprets the impact effect and mechanism of the digital economy on the binary margin of agricultural exports from the perspective of the digital economy, providing new research perspectives and approaches for promoting the growth of agricultural exports. Second, in terms of theoretical analysis, the above studies have not been fully analysed in terms of the specific mechanism of the impact of the digital economy on agricultural exports. Based on the positive and negative characteristics of agricultural trade, this study introduces two kinds of roles into the theoretical analysis framework to comprehensively determine the trade impact effect of the digital economy. Third, in terms of research design, this study empirically examines the impact of the digital economy on the binary margin of agricultural products, passing a series of robustness tests and investigating the mediating roles of trade cost and market competition effects, producing an empirical basis for China to leverage the digital economy to promote the binary margin of agricultural exports.

This study aims to investigate the influence of digital transformation on the overall financial performance of firms, with a specific focus on Chinese-listed companies from 2010 to 2021. It seeks to understand the impacts on various accounting and financial indicators in emerging economies such as China.

This study employs a text-mining approach to construct a digital transformation index based on the data sample of 11,814 firm-year observations from China’s A-share listed companies. This index serves as a proxy to measure the extent of digital transformation and its impact on financial performance and health.

The findings indicate that digital transformation significantly enhances overall financial performance and health, as evidenced by increased profitability, reduced operational costs, and lowered financial risks. The study reveals a time-lagged effect, where the benefits of digital transformation become more apparent after about one year. Further analysis shows that the value of digital transformation is more evident in a firm’s asset items. This raises the possibility of recognising the by-product, such as data resources, in the digital transformation process.

This research offers a unique contribution by linking digital transformation to financial performance using a large dataset from China's A-share listed firms. Doing so enhances our understanding of the tangible effects of digital transformation on corporate performance. Furthermore, this research provides valuable insights for the advancement of future accounting practices and the development of standards.

This study aims to assess the impact of determinants on the effectiveness of internal audit (IA) within the banking industry of Bangladesh.

The data was obtained through 152 survey questionnaires from a total of 43 privately owned and six state-owned commercial banks in Bangladesh. The analysis was conducted using structural equation modeling.

The findings demonstrate that the independence of internal auditors and the quality of IA substantially impact enhancing the efficiency of IA. On the other hand, the competence of internal auditors and management support in IA functions do not significantly impact the effectiveness of IA.

The study’s findings may have significant policy implications for the government, regulators, internal auditors, management committees and other stakeholders in establishing programmes to enhance the efficacy of IA as a component of banking audit management reforms.

This study makes three distinct contributions to the existing literature. Firstly, previous literature focused on the determinants affecting the external audit efficiency of the public companies and banking sectors in Bangladesh (Hasan, 2018; M. M. U. Reza, 2021). In this study, the author enhances the research by presenting empirical findings on the IA effectiveness of banks. Secondly, the author expands the research by incorporating both private and state-owned commercial banks as samples. Thirdly, the study is unique given that it investigates the effectiveness of IA in response to the recent financial scandals in the banking industry of Bangladesh (The Daily Star, 2023).

This study aims to investigate the relationship between corporate sustainable development goals (SDGs) disclosure and analyst forecast quality.

The study focuses on a sample of 95 Italian-listed companies preparing the mandatory non-financial declaration (NFD) according to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards over a five-year period (2017–2021), corresponding to an unbalanced sample of 438 observations. Analyst forecast quality was proxied by earnings forecast accuracy (FA) and earnings forecast dispersion (FD), built on data retrieved from the Refinitiv database. A manual content analysis was performed on NFDs to derive an SDG disclosure score (SDGD) for each sampled company.

This study provides empirical evidence suggesting that voluntary SDG disclosure matters to the capital market in that it helps enhance the information environment of companies, evidenced by improved analyst forecast quality. In particular, this study highlighted that SDG disclosure positively influences analyst FA while negatively affecting analyst FD.

This study focuses on the Italian context, which has idiosyncratic characteristics regarding the structure of the financial market, the composition of corporate ownership and experience in non-financial reporting practices.

This study indicates to corporate managers that following GRI standards may represent the right way to better integrate SDG disclosure in corporate non-financial reports and increase the relevance of such information for investors and other capital market participants.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that empirically examines the association between SDG disclosure and analyst forecast quality.

This study aims to determine the effect of bank ownership on the credit risk of Indonesian Islamic local banks (ILBs).

This study uses the system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation technique with a sample of 155 Islamic local banks in Indonesia from 2012 to 2019.

The results show that commissioner board (D.COW) ownership has a negative effect on credit risk. This indicates that an increase in the number of shares of Islamic local banks owned by the commissioner board reduces credit risk. On the other hand, government ownership (D.GOW), the Sharia supervisory board (D.SOW) and the director board (D.DOW) do not affect credit risk.

The government, Sharia supervisory board and director board need opportunities to easily own more Islamic local bank shares. Therefore, the provisions regarding the share ownership rights of the government, Sharia supervisory board and director board need to be improved to increase their role in reducing credit risk.

Previous researchers have not studied the effect of government ownership, the commissioner board, the Sharia supervisory board and the ownership of directors on credit risk at the ILB in Indonesia.

Face is the most intuitive and representative feature at the individual level. Many studies show that beautiful faces help individuals and enterprises obtain economic benefits and form a high economic premium, but the discussion of their potential social value is insufficient. This study aims to focus on the impact of the personal characteristics of executives. It mainly analyzes the impact mechanism of CEO facial attractiveness on corporate social responsibility (CSR) decision-making, clarifying the social value of beauty from the perspective of CSR.

The authors use the regression model to analyze the panel data set, which was conducted by a sample of Chinese publicly listed firms from 2016 to 2018.

The study found that CEOs with high facial attractiveness are more active in fulfilling CSR, which can usually bring higher social benefits. CEOs with beautiful faces are prone to overconfidence, are optimistic about their ability and the future development of the enterprise and are more willing to increase their investment in CSR. CEO duality can positively regulate the positive correlation between a CEO’s facial attractiveness and CSR.

Based on the perspective of upper echelons theory, this paper explores the mechanism of CEO facial attractiveness on CSR. This study enriches the perspective of the upper echelon’s theoretical research and has essential enlightenment for CEO selection and training practice.

Digital inclusive finance has a positive promotion effect on the development of the national economy, but little research exists on how digital inclusive finance affects high-quality consumption in economically developed regions. Therefore, to fill the gap, this paper aims to study the impact of digital inclusive finance on high-quality consumption development using the economically developed regions of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai as examples.

Firstly, the entropy method is used to construct the index of high-quality consumption among residents. Then, the municipal-level data of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai from 2011 to 2020 are used to test the impact. Subsequently, the mechanism of action test and heterogeneity analysis are conducted.

The results show that digital inclusive finance has a positive role in promoting the high-quality consumption of residents in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai. At the same time, digital inclusive finance can promote high-quality consumption through its own digital payment and internet insurance channels. There is regional heterogeneity in the impact.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine whether and how digital inclusive finance affects high-quality consumption. The authors consider multiple dimensions, such as consumption level, consumption structure, consumption ability, consumption environment and consumption mode, to measure high-quality consumption. The findings provide valuable insights for policymakers, investors and regulators in planning regulations.

The purpose of the research is to examine the impact of leader humor on employee job crafting. Using the insights from self-determination theory (SDT), we investigate the underlying mechanism of employees’ flow at work and the moderating role of employees’ playfulness trait.

We adopted a three-wave field survey of 306 employees recruited from various industries. The moderated mediation model was examined using latent structural equation model analysis.

Results revealed that leader humor positively affected employees’ flow at work and subsequent job crafting. Moreover, both the direct effect of leader humor on employees’ flow at work and the indirect effect of leader humor on employees’ job crafting via flow at work were amplified by employees’ playfulness trait.

Leaders are encouraged to use jokes and humorous language to facilitate job crafting among playful subordinates. Organizations can create a work environment conducive to flow at work through job redesign, regardless of employees’ levels of playfulness trait.

The paper uncovers the critical role of flow in the relationship between leader humor and employee job crafting and identifies employees’ playfulness trait as a boundary condition in which leader humor works.