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Over the past three decades, industrial innovations and technological advancements have changed business dynamics, adversely devastating the overall environment. As a result, our oceans have been severely affected due to climate change and global warming. To address this issue, this study investigates the factors that cause ocean CO2 using a sample of 44 countries over 2012–2021 and explores a dynamic and causal relationship between economic growth, ocean carbon dioxide emissions, energy consumption, and control variables relating to the ocean industry. This study finds that increasing economic activity tends to increase ocean carbon emissions. The results support the evidence of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis suggesting an inverted U-shaped association between ocean emissions and real income for the sample countries. Moreover, this study reports that ocean health index, maritime container transport, trade of fishery and ocean species, aquaculture production and marine species, and employment rate in the fishery processing sector are the significant factors of ocean CO2. Region-wise analyses suggest that real income positively influences ocean emissions and confirm the evidence of the EKC hypothesis in European sample countries but these relationships have an insignificant effect in Asia and the Pacific and the American regions. Furthermore, a short-run unidirectional panel causality flows from the production of aquaculture and other species to RD&D, from OHI and GDP to trade of fishery and other species, and from OHI to employment rate in the fishery sector. Likewise, bidirectional causality runs from energy consumption and maritime transport to ocean CO2 in the long term. Regarding the long-run causal association, the results determine that all of the estimated coefficients of the lagged error correction terms are statistically significant which explains that they are crucial in the adjustment process as they deviate from the long-run equilibrium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past fifteen years, Chinese investors explored their international business opportunities. Over this time period their investment flows moved from developed to developing and emerging economies. This study analyzes the Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) deployed in twenty-five emerging and developing countries during the 2009 to 2014 period. On the basis of OFDI statistics, it seems as though all of the Chinese investment projects that we explored have been successful. This study examines the determinants of Chinese OFDI using panel data analysis and finds that the size of the economy, market opportunities, cost advantages, country risk, and geographical proximity are the main factors that influence Chinese investment in emerging and developing countries. In addition, this study finds that there are significant regional differences in the determinates of Chinese OFDI. The results of panel analysis on the selected Asian countries including Pakistan suggest that market opportunities, wage differentials, and geographic distance are robust variables. This study also discusses the perceived benefits obtained from the formulation of the CPEC project, policy recommendations for the implementation of the CPEC, and issues and challenges related to the CPEC project. KEY WORDS: Foreign Direct Investment, Emerging and Developing Countries, China, CPEC, Pakistan, 1. Introduction Research focused on international business suggests that firms develop and foster international operations with the goal of developing a set of competitive advantages which provide them with better [...]

This study examines the aftermarket performance of high-green and low-green IPO and how green IPOs can optimize portfolio allocation. We assume the higher level of greenness increases investors' participation in IPOs. To this end, we develop the utility function and determine that investors prefer to participate in new issues when firms account for greenness measures. This study proposes the global aspects of green measure: the desired level of greenness a firm maintains. We find that IPOs in our sample are far below the global standards of greenness. This evidence suggests they must adopt the necessary actions to make the environment green. Another significant contribution of this study is to measure the performance of high and low-green IPOs in short- and long-run horizons. This study reveals that high-green IPOs are less underpriced. This study estimates the effect of greenness on initial returns and finds an inverse relationship suggesting that high-green IPOs are less underpriced due to lower risk associated with new issues. In terms of measuring longer-term performance, this study determines that high-green IPOs underperform less than low-green IPOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies panel data techniques to Austrian non-financial listed companies for investigating the managerial discretion hypothesis and asymmetric information. We analyse full population of non-financial companies listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange from 2007-2020. Equipment investment is susceptible to cash flows, providing evidence that over-investment leads to returns on investment lower than cost of capital. CFi,t-1/Ki,t-1 has a strongly positive effect in family-owned companies' constraints. Cash constraints prevent firms from attaining optimal investment level. CFi,t-1/Ki,t-1 positively affects investment providing strong evidence that state-owned companies' managers exercise discretion while investing cash flows in sub-optimal projects. The effect of voting rights (VR) of ultimate shareholders on performance is an inverted U-curve with turning point at 49.8% VR concentration. Beyond this point downward slope provides strong evidence of entrenchment hypothesis, with negative entrenchment effect dominating the incentive effect. Ultimate shareholders' expropriation is detrimental for minority shareholders. Large shareholders' detrimental behaviour slows down growth of financial markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the effect of demographic characteristics on household finance in Pakistan. Using Household Integrated Economic Survey data and applying the proportional sampling technique, we determine that household size, secondary and tertiary education, gender, size of income, urban area, occupation, and province-wise residency are the important predictors of household finance. We split our dataset controlling for household size, age, and income. This study identifies a small variation in the determinants of household finance when examining the behavior of small- and large-sized households, young and mature households, and low- and high-income households. We compare our results with previous literature and report that the behavior of households varies in different countries due to different demographic characteristics. Hence, the behavior households vary across countries; however, there is no specific factor that varies as we move from country to country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how monetary and fiscal policy can work during the coronavirus shock and how to deal with the structural problem of population aging in Japan. The sudden drop in stock prices in many countries reflects a decline in market sentiment. Money is shifting from riskier assets to safer assets which causes stock prices to drop further. Massive fiscal support by issuing government bonds (= Corona bonds) is needed to retain confidence in the market. At the same time, the structural problem of the aging population will not go away ("Decreased Effectiveness of Fiscal and Monetary Policies in Japan's Aging Society" by Naoyuki Yoshino and Hiroaki Miyamoto, Japan and the World Economy 42, 2017). The article will propose how we can mitigate a possibly enormous increase in government debt due to huge temporary budget spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study empirically examines the relationship between the banking competition and the risks faced by the financial sector (i.e. solvency, liquidity, and credit risks) considering 31 banks for the period 2001 to 2018. Banks are further sub-divided into three categories i.e. state-owned banks, foreign banks, and private/commercial banks. The results reveal that Pakistan's banking industry is relatively elastic and an increase in competition is directly associated with solvency risk, liquidity risk and credit risk of financial institutions and these findings corroborate the competition fragility theory. Besides, state-owned banks have a lesser probability to cope with solvency risk, however, foreign banks appear to face the least liquidity risk whereas private banks appear to face the least credit risk among the entire cluster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]