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The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of funding liquidity risk and liquidity risk on the bank risk-taking.

This study employs a system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation technique and a sample of 57 banks operating in BRICS countries over the period from 2006 to 2015.

The results reveal that liquidity risk has a significant and negative effect on the bank risk-taking, indicating that a decrease in liquidity risk contributes to higher bank risk-taking. The study also reveals that funding liquidity risk has the substantial impact on bank risk-taking, suggesting lower funding liquidity risk results in higher bank risk-taking. These results are consistent with prior assumptions.

The implications of this study highlight the fact that liquidity risk is a risk factor which drives the potential bank default, of which banks tend to take more risks when higher funding liquidity exists.

This study offers a number of valuable implications for the policy makers as well as practitioners. The policy makers should take into account better liquidity risk management framework aimed at preventing banks from taking excessive risks. Bank executives must pay more attention on how banks could hold more liquid securities and cash. Less risk-taking reduces higher borrowing costs undermining earnings through imposing taxes on corporate.

This work uncovered that liquidity risk per se is an important and previously unidentified risk factor, specifically its effects on bank risk-taking and contributes to the view in support of holding more liquid securities than the past.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the empirical link between real exchange rate (RER) undervaluation and sectoral growth in South Africa between 1984 and 2014.

The study employs a dynamic panel data approach estimated by the system generalised method of moments technique in a bid to control for endogeneity.

The authors find a significant positive impact of undervaluation on sectoral growth which increases with capital accumulation. Also, the authors confirm that undervaluation promotes sectoral growth up to a point where further increases in undervaluation retards growth.

The results confirm the importance of policies that keep the domestic currency weaker to foster sectoral growth.

The originality of this paper lies in establishing the impact of exchange rate undervaluation on growth at a sector level in the context of South Africa using a dynamic panel data approach.

This study aims to exploit Tobin’s Q model of investment to examine the relationship between corporate governance and green innovation.

The study is based on a sample of 3,896 firms from 2002 to 2021, covering 45 countries worldwide. The authors adopt Tobin’s Q model to conceptualize the relationship between corporate governance and investment in green research and development (R&D). The authors argue that agency costs and financial market frictions affect corporate investment and are fundamental factors in R&D activities. By limiting agency conflicts, effective governance favors efficiency, facilitates access to external financing and encourages green innovation. The authors analyzed the causal effect by using the system-generalized method of moments (system-GMM).

The results reveal that the better the corporate governance, the more the firm invests in green R&D. A 1%-point increase in the corporate governance ratings leads to an increase in green R&D expenses to the total asset ratio of about 0.77 percentage points. In addition, an increase in the score of each dimension (strategy, management and shareholder) of corporate governance results in an increase in the probability of green product innovation. Finally, green innovation is positively related to firm environmental performance, including emission reduction and resource use efficiency.

The findings provide implications to support managers and policymakers on how to improve sustainability through corporate governance. Governance mechanisms will help resolve agency problems and, in turn, encourage green innovation.

Understanding the impact of corporate governance on green innovation may help firms combat climate change, a crucial societal concern. The present study helps achieve one of the precious UN’s sustainable development goals: Goal 13 on climate action.

This study goes beyond previous research by adopting Tobin’s Q model to examine the relationship between corporate governance and green R&D investment. Overall, the results suggest that effective corporate governance is necessary for environmental efficiency.

This study aims to determine how Basel III capital requirements affect the stability of Islamic banks globally during the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The secondary data for all Islamic banks worldwide from 2004 to 2021 is obtained from the FitchConnect database. The main technique was a two-step generalized method of moment (GMM) system, and the data were tested using pooled ordinary least squares, fixed effects and difference GMM models for robustness checks.

Regression results support the moral hazard hypothesis based on evidence that both the total capital ratio and the Tier 1 capital ratio have a statistically significant positive impact on the stability of Islamic banks globally. Furthermore, neither the global financial crisis of 2008–2009 nor COVID-19 (2020–2021) significantly impacted the stability of Islamic banks worldwide. The results are robust across alternative measures of stability, capital buffers, dummy variables and estimation techniques. According to the descriptive statistics, the number of Islamic banks that disclose their regulatory capital ratios to the public has increased over the study period, and the mean of total capital and Tier 1 ratios are considerably greater than what is required by Basel II and Basel III.

Bankers, regulators and policymakers should benefit from the evidence on capital and risk management in Islamic banking according to Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) and Islamic financial services board (IFSB) international standards in various jurisdictions.

This research builds on earlier studies that were both beneficial and instructive by exploring the relationship between BCBS and IFSB capital guidelines and the trustworthiness of Islamic banks in greater depth. This study uses numerous capital ratios, buffers and stability measures to provide an international context for research on Islamic banking. In addition, the database is up-to-date to include information about the COVID-19 pandemic aftereffects in the year 2021. This study also introduces the Basel membership of Islamic banks to provide context for countries still at the Basel II stage or are yet to begin implementing the Basel III international standard.

This study examines the linear and non-linear effects of enterprise risk management (ERM) and corporate governance (CG) on insurers’ risk-taking behaviour.

The study employed panel data of 63 insurers from South Africa over the period 2015 and 2019. The study used the generalised method of moments (GMM) to determine the direct relationship, while the dynamic panel threshold technique was utilised to discover whether there is non-linearity in the relationship and the threshold level at which ERM and CG stimulate insurance risk-taking.

The result from the GMM elicits a positive relationship between ERM and risk-taking, implying that insurers with a robust ERM system are more likely to pursue higher risks. The empirical evidence also suggests that board size and board independence improve insurers’ risk-taking. Contrarily, gender diversity shows an inverse relationship with risk-taking. The dynamic panel threshold regression confirms non-linearities between ERM, CG and risk-taking. The empirical evidence indicates a U-shaped relationship between ERM and risk-taking, implying that a robust ERM system increases insurers’ risk-taking and vice-versa. Further, board size and independence reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship, suggesting that larger boards and a higher proportion of independent directors exhibit lower risk-taking. However, gender diversity presents a negative relationship, demonstrating a strong impact at higher threshold levels. This tells that the presence of females on the board reduces insurers’ risk-taking preferences.

Due to the risk-bearing nature of the insurance business, it is required that they ensure a robust ERM system for prudent risk-taking decisions. This demands strict adherence to ERM principles and allocating sufficient resources for effective implementation. Also, there is a need for strong CG structures that pay more attention to diversity when selecting board members due to their influence in ensuring improved risk-taking choices.

This study contributes to the existing literature by providing insights into the under-researched role of ERM and CG in insurers’ risk-taking behaviour. The study further extends the literature by providing evidence on the non-linearity and threshold levels at which ERM and CG influence insurers’ risk-taking choices. The findings are unique and contribute to the growing body of literature documenting the need for strong ERM and CG systems in insurance companies.

One of the main obstacles to the flourishment of African entrepreneurship is financial constraint. Existing studies on the nexus between entrepreneurship and financial development are inconclusive, while the position of African economies remains unknown. The purpose of this paper is to empirically study the impact of financial development on entrepreneurship in Africa.

This study utilizes data of 20 selected countries in Africa over a period of 2006–2017. International Monetary Fund (IMF) data on broad-based financial development were combined with World Bank Entrepreneurship database. This study uses system generalized methods of moments (system GMM) technique and the recently developed dynamic panel threshold based on dynamic panel GMM.

The following findings emerged: financial development does not spur entrepreneurship in Africa; there is a threshold at which financial development improves the level of African entrepreneurship; and the tendency of financial development to improve the level of entrepreneurship is conditioned on conducive business regulation and strong institutional quality at a specific threshold value.

This is one of the few studies that examines the impact of financial development on entrepreneurship in Africa. This study shows that the financial development relies on the effectiveness of regulatory environment to extend loan and other financial services to new firm entrants. In addition, the results of this study reveal that the assumption of linearity in the nexus between finance and entrepreneurship is not tenable for the case of Africa. Therefore, policymakers should keep on developing African financial system to accelerate the pace of entrepreneurship development.

The study aims to examine the non-linear relationship between self-employment and economic growth (growth) in the context of developing countries.

Data from a sample of 83 developing countries covering a period 2002–2015 is used. The empirical analysis is based on the dynamic panel data estimation, and the results are estimated using the two-step system GMM technique. Non-linearity between self-employment and growth is validated using Sasabuchi (1980) and Lind and Mehlum (2010) (SLM) test.

The empirical analysis suggests a non-linear and a U-shaped relationship between self-employment and growth, confirmed by the SLM test. The threshold levels for total self-employment, female self-employment and male self-employment are 57.49%, 58.86 and 55.81%. The findings are also robust to alternate estimation technique and alternate measure of the dependent variable.

Policy implications of the findings include the need for policies that foster and channel self-employment properly as the higher level of self-employment is found to benefit growth.

This study is the first attempt to examine the empirical relationship between self-employment and growth. As such, it makes a novel contribution to the extant literature on the relationship between the two variables.

Although various studies have investigated the corporate political activity (CPA), however, there is no definite report which shows its effect on the public policy outcome or the organization’s performance. Hence, the political effects of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) have garnered a lot of recent interest since the CSR included activities which have an intended or an unintended effect on the CPA–corporate financial performance (CFP) link. We use data made available by the 1995 Lobbying Disclosure Act, while the CSR indices were gathered from the Fortune Magazine’s most admired companies from 2007 to 2016. We analyzed the relationship between the organization’s CPA and CFP, with the help of the dynamic panel data system generalized method of moment (GMM) estimation. Their results showed that the CPA did not improve the firm’s performance. Moreover, CPA and CSR are substitute in affecting financial performance, because they are essentially exclusive investments that require resources but do not have synergies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of leverage on firms’ discretionary investment in Africa.

The authors employ a dynamic panel data model estimated with generalised method of moments (GMM) estimation techniques on the panel data of listed African non-financial firms. A dynamic model and the generalised methods of moments estimations are handy in controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, endogeneity, autocorrelation, heteroscedasticity, etc.

In spite of different settings, markets, leverage levels and methodologies, the authors found evidence that leverage constrains investment in African firms. The negative impact is more pronounced in firms with low-growth opportunities than in firms with high-growth opportunities. The results are inclined to the theory that leverage plays a disciplinary role to avoid overinvestment.

African firms’ investment policy does not solely depend on the neoclassical fundamentals determinants of profitability, net worth and cash flows. Financing strategy also has a considerable bearing on the investment policy. The results provide evidence that leverage is a negative externality to the firm’s discretional investment policy for both lowly levered and highly leveraged firms. African firms’ should consider maintaining their low debt levels and rely more on internally generated funds so as not to suppress any available cash flows to interest payments and loan covenants from debt holders.

The study contributes to the literature on investment and financial leverage by the authors providing evidence from Africa, a developing continent, that has not been explored. It shows how conservative leverage levels of African firms, which have been reported to be rising, are impacting on investments. Pertaining to empirical methodology, the authors employ a dynamic panel data model, the GMM estimation technique, which is robust in controlling endogeneity, and a possible bi-directional causality between leverage and investment which have not been used in literature. The study also enables a comparison of the effect of high leverage and low leverage on firm’s discretional investment.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between macroeconomic fundamentals, intuitional quality and shadow economy.

By utilizing data setspanning from 2004 to 2015 of 141 countries, the study has employed advanced panel technique, i.e. Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) method. In order to check consistency of the results, the study also used fixed effect and random effect for robustness.

The study finds that for the full sample, institutional quality has negative effect on shadow economy while macroeconomic fundaments effect shadow economy differently. After splitting the sample into Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and non-OIC countries subsamples, it observes same influence of macroeconomic fundaments and institutional quality on shadow economy, but the effect of macroeconomic fundaments and institutional quality on shadow economy is less observed for OIC countries. The results are found consistence by using different estimation methods.

The current literature has focused on estimating the size of shadow economy and literature linking the macroeconomic fundaments, institutional quality and shadow economy is scarce. Additionally, this study provides the evidence for cross comparison between OIC economies and non-OIC economies.