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The purpose of this study is to examine the role of push and pull factors that have influenced China’s outward foreign direct investment (COFDI) in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries. The sample of BRI countries is divided according to three geographical regions representing Europe, MENA, and Asia for better understanding of the main factors that influence the COFDI across the respective regions. This study supports Dunning’s FDI theory in modeling the determinants of COFDI in BRI economies by focusing on the role of push and pull factors. This present study also extends and improves the existing research by considering the new factors, new methodology, and splitting the sample BRI economies. Thus, a static, dynamic panel and quantile regression technique was employed to model COFDI determinants for 50 BRI countries from 2005 to 2016. The main findings revealed that China’s minimum wage policy, including the host countries’ natural resources, labor cost, and institutional factors were the key determinants influencing COFDI. However, some determinants such as the host countries’ gross domestic product, total patents, trade openness, and inflation rate did not significantly influence COFDI. By splitting the sample according to the respective regions, the results revealed that only the minimum wage policy significantly influenced COFDI in the European region. In comparison, natural resources, gross domestic product, and minimum wage policy were statistically significant for the MENA region. In the Asian region, minimum wage policy, government index, and trade openness were proven essential for COFDI. The policy implications from this study suggest that MNCs from China need to strategize their location for investment in BRI economies. In complement, the BRI recipient countries need to show their advantage and strength in attracting more FDI from China. BRI economies and China MNCs can also be leveraged through understanding how strong the push and pull factors are exerting on outward investment from China. First published online 30 March 2022

This paper provides the influence of working capital management (WCM) on the performance of public listed wholesale & retail industry and property industry in Malaysia from 2002 to 2011. Regression model is employed by using two measures of companies’ performance namely Return on Assets, ROA (proxy to gauge the firm’s profitability) and Tobin’s Q, TQ (proxy to gauge the firm’s market value) as the dependant variables. WCM components include Current Liabilities to Total Assets Ratio and Current Assets to Total Assets Ratio with three control variables which include of Firm Size (SIZE), Sales Growth (SLGR) and Financial Leverage (LEV) as the independent variables. The results to a very large extent indicate that CATAR and SIZE have significant positive effect on the performance of firm. It suggests that wholesale & retail industry and property industry in Malaysia should pursue unadventurous investment strategy by implementing high altitude of short term investment in order to make profit and create value for their shareholders. It also reveals that the larger the firms are, the more profitable they are; recommending the firms shall expand their business to achieve higher profit and accomplish shareholder wealth maximisation.

Recently, there has been increasing global interest and concerns towards sustainable and environmental friendly development among firms and investors. In conjunction to this rising demand, Green Bond market was introduced. In providing general overview on how Green Bond is perceived by shareholders, this study attempts to identify the shareholders' wealth reactions towards Green Bond announcements using multi-country samples. Specifically, we find that shareholders generally react positively a day after the Green Bond announcements were made by issuers. Overall, this study would be useful for future researchers who plan to explore the potential of using multi-country event study methodology and to add more evidence on existing literatures in relation to credit risk valuation for international corporate Green Bonds.