We examine the relationship between labour market flexibility, as measured by employment protection legislation (EPL), and long-term economic growth in developed economies from 1995 to 2022. We consider conflicting viewpoints on whether rigid labour market regulations hinder or promote economic growth. Employing a cross-country regression model, controlling for factors including initial GDP per capita, capital formation, human capital, research and development, and indicators of macroeconomic performance, we find that only initial income level and capital formation significantly influence long-run growth in real per capita GDP. EPL has no significant impact in the long run, challenging the pre-2000 advocacy of labour market deregulation by major international organisations. We conclude that policy should focus on supporting the investment decisions of the private sector without distorting market mechanisms.

This work investigates the strength and the pattern of linkages among the three markets of qualitatively differentiated milk (i.e., conventional, organic without heymilk, and organic with heymilk) in Austria using the flexible TVP-VAR frequency connectedness approach and information on prices from 2018 to 2023. The main empirical findings are: (a) Taken together, the markets have maintained a moderate degree of connectedness to each other.  (b) Price linkages have been frequency-dependent; much of the adjustments to incoming information have been completed within 3 months. (c) Connectedness has been asymmetric; the highest quality (organic with heymilk) has been a net transmitter of price shocks to organic without heymilk. (d) The intensity of connectedness has been time-varying; however, the internal structure of the market network (i.e., the net transmitters and receivers of price shocks) has remained fairly stable.

Self-employment is often associated with entrepreneurship and regarded as a driver of innovation, job creation and economic growth. As such, many countries have policies to promote and support self-employment. One mechanism for self-employment to drive job growth is for sole traders to become an employer through hiring employees. However, there are few studies that investigate if solo self-employment helps the transitions into employership. Using the Understanding Society data, this study shows that in the UK labour market solo self-employment does not work as a ‘steppingstone’ to employership. This raises the question why self-employment should be promoted through public policy as in the UK and many other developed countries.

This study considers the effects of disclosure conditions on firms' investment decisions when facing an identical competitor in multiple markets. Assuming that there are congestion costs between multiple investments to reduce marginal cost for each market, this study focuses on the cases where the disclosure conditions may differ by market. Like previous studies on single Cournot competition, these results show that firms invest more in the observable investment markets than in the unobservable markets under symmetric disclosure conditions. However, firms invest more in the unobservable market if there are asymmetric disclosure conditions.

Information leakage in the stock market has been widely proven. Information disclosure is sometimes uneven, and there is significant information asymmetry between ordinary investors and professional institutional investors. In this paper, Regression Discontinuity design (RDD) model is first employed to analyze the information leakage issues. Based on the daily closing stock prices of 15 capital service listed companies, we analyze the difference between the market reaction time and the disclosure time of two stamp tax policies. We found that the sample policies information may leaked to the market about two days earlier. This paper provides a new method analyzing information leakage.

This paper intends to analyze efficiency, in its weak form, in the stock markets of Austria (ATX), Poland (WIG), the Czech Republic (PX Prague), Hungary (BUX), Croatia (CROBEX), Serbia (BELEX 15), Romania (BET), and Slovenia (SBI TOP), from February 16, 2018, to February 15, 2023. To achieve the research aim, we intend to answer the following research question: i) Have events in 2020 and 2022 heightened the persistence of Central European stock markets? Results suggest that persistence in returns has increased significantly during the first wave of Covid-19 and the Russian invasion in the year 2023, but we also saw that most stock markets already exhibit long memories, implying that the research question has been partially validated. This research can provide valuable insights to investors, policymakers, and others interested in financial risk management.

Previous literature shows that the price-discovery ability of options market varies substantially over time. Using data of Shanghai Stock Exchange 50 exchange-traded fund options, this paper shows that options prices contribute relatively less to price discovery during low-sentiment periods, but the price-discovery ability of options market remains unchanged during high-sentiment periods. These results suggest that change in aggregate investor sentiment is an important source of the time variation in options’ price discovery ability. Moreover, the options market experiences greater bid-ask spreads when investor sentiment is lower, supporting a “transaction costs mechanism.” This paper fulfills related literature on the time variation in options’ price-discovery ability.

With the daily data from Nov 20, 2019 to Oct 31, 2022, this paper examines the dynamic nonlinear effects of RCEP on Dual Circulation and Greater Bay Area stock market from a quantile perspective. The rolling window quantile regressions detect the positive effects of RCEP on Dual Circulation and Greater Bay Area stock markets with significant time-varying characteristics. Meanwhile, QQ results show that the impacts from RCEP index are more significant under extreme conditions. In addition, we further use a nonparametric QC test to provide evidence on the predictive power of RCEP for Dual Circulation and Greater Bay Area with stock market.

China's carbon emission trading market has been formally established, but few studies have been conducted to analyze the impact of this policy on the regional urbanization level. Therefore, this paper evaluates whether the carbon trading pilot policy can enhance the regional urbanization level in China through the difference-in-differences method and analyzes the mediating role of industrial structure upgrading in this process. The results prove that the carbon trading market policy can accelerate the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure in the region so that it promotes the development of regional urbanization. Moreover, the effects of the policy are concentratedly manifested in the eastern region of China.

We assess the impact of the Strategic Economic Plan on Singapore’s long-term GDP per capita. To our knowledge, we are the first to evaluate the effect of the 1991 plan on Singapore’s successful growth trajectory using methodologies aimed at causal identification. In other words, this article applies the Synthetic Control method and World Bank data from 1970 to 2018. We estimate an average increase of 6,641.71 US$ in Singapore’s GDP per capita. Results remain robust to placebo and leave-one-out tests and the Synthetic Difference-in-Differences method.

The precise prediction of carbon emissions trading prices is the foundation for the stable and sustainable development of the carbon financial market. In recent years, influenced by a combination of factors such as the pandemic, trading regulations, and policies, carbon prices have exhibited strong random volatility and clear non-stationary characteristics. Traditional single-perspective prediction methods based on conventional statistical models are increasingly inadequate due to the homogenization of features and are struggling to adapt to China's regional carbon emissions trading market. Therefore, this paper proposes a multi-perspective fusion-based prediction method tailored to the Chinese market. It leverages carbon emissions trading information from key cities as relevant features to predict the price changes in individual cities. Inspired by the development of artificial intelligence, this paper implements various time series models based on deep neural networks. The effectiveness of the multi-perspective approach is validated through multiple metrics. It provides scientific decision-making tools for domestic carbon emissions trading investors, making a significant contribution to strengthening carbon market risk management and promoting the establishment and rational development of a unified carbon market in China.

The current study examines the performance of 76 Japanese equity Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) over the period 1/1/2018-12/31/2022. Performance is estimated in several ways, that is, raw returns, alphas from single- and multi-factor regression models, and risk-adjusted returns. The market timing skills of ETF managers are examined too. The results reveal that, on average, the examined ETFs do not produce any material alpha. The results also indicate that the risk factors suggested by Fama and French (1993 & 2015) are more or less capable of explaining the performance of the Japanese ETFs. Finally, the findings show that 21% of ETF managers possess some sort of market timing skills. However, the managers fail to time the volatility of the stock market.

In this paper, a portfolio analysis is carried out using the Sharpe ratio to identify the optimal market portfolio. The measure of investment performance with a Sharpe ratio is compared to results obtained with bootstrapped resamples of the Sharpe ratio. The results indicate that the choice of the market portfolio is highly affected by the uncertainty regarding the estimation of the expected returns and the variance-covariance matrix between the returns, that is, the estimation risk associated with these parameters.

This study empirically examines the influence of corporate financialization on trade credit financing, focusing on non-financial companies listed in China's A-share market from 2010 to 2022. The results indicate that as corporate financialization increases, companies will obtain less trade credit financing. Further incorporating moderating factors like market position and financing constraints, we find that a higher market position effectively mitigates the negative impact of corporate financialization on trade credit financing, whereas higher financing constraints exacerbate the adverse effects of corporate financialization on trade credit financing. Additional analysis shows that corporate financialization negatively affects trade credit financing by crowding out main business performance and increasing operational risks. Moreover, corporate financialization more strongly inhibits trade credit financing in state-owned companies.

In the behavioral domain, this study discloses the pattern between microblogging-opinionated information and yields on the investment. This phenomenon is particularly related to the political instability in the Pakistan’s economy through the multivariate techniques. Pre-political crisis, the pessimistic sentiments were priced in yields on the investment. In environments of political instability, the intensity of decline in yields was more responsive against an incline in the negative opinions. Meanwhile, the intensity of increase in returns was less responsive against an incline in the positive opinions. The findings were further supported by the Bayesian approach. Before the political instability takes place in the Pakistan’s economy, the occurrence of yields was noted in response to the bearish market period. Post-political instability, there was a higher posterior probability for occurrence of returns against the bearish market period. Conversely, a higher posterior likelihood was noted for occurrence of investment’s yields in response to the bullish market period, but this relevance was not completely probable. From the impulse response analysis, the response of returns was reported against the standard deviation shocks in the microblogging sentiment indicators. The analysis may have potential implications in terms of disclosing the investors’ behavior from a political perspective.

In this study, the time-varying pattern of returns with the trading cost is assessed in light of sanctions on the Russia’s economy. The analysis is performed on the Moscow Exchange Index (MOEX) using the ordinary least squares (OLS) method, Bayes’ Theorem technique, and vector error correction model (VECM). Firstly, the transparency of asset’s value in the same trading period was noted to execute the trade with a limited price impact. Thus, the liquidity seems not priced in returns. In addition, the posterior probability of the transparent asset’s value stabilized the market at a limited transaction cost. In this case, there is less likelihood of liquidity acting as a risk element in returns during the same trading session. These results correspond to the era without sanctions, as well as economic restrictions period. Before the economic restrictions, the execution of investment occurred on its real or close value due to the market transparency in the following trading period. This implies, that the past trading cost series is not priced in yields on investment. During the Russia-related sanctions, a higher price impact of transaction was noted due to the ambiguity in the future asset’s value. Therefore, the past liquidity series is a pricing element in the short run and long run. The analysis suggests a potential inference of trading cost to determine the yield on investment.

Energy Performance Certificates are a key tool for achieving energy efficiency in the building sector. The existence of this type of legislation provides incentives for the energy renovation of buildings, increases energy-efficiency investments, and improves social welfare. At the same time, informational asymmetries are mitigated and energy consumption is reduced. However, the decarbonization of the building sector might influence regional energy poverty, especially because the rural energy poor are more vulnerable to energy price increases than their urban counterparts. Empirical research on rural-urban differences and the effects of Energy Performance Certificates is urgently needed, given the rising fuel prices and vulnerabilities of the energy market.

Non-compliance with tax obligations, particularly by wealthy taxpayers and large corporations, continues to represent a source of social injustice that fuels social instability, especially in developing countries. Understanding the strategies of tax evasion and avoidance is of critical importance. This article highlights five main strategies used by large corporations and wealthy taxpayers to avoid taxes, including tax havens, the underground economy, aggressive tax optimization, alternative financial markets, and crypto currencies. We also propose several actions to tackle global tax non-compliance, including prevention, peer reporting, active monitoring of compliance indicators and inter- national cooperation. These actions can be combined to achieve optimal results in reducing tax evasion and avoidance.

Cryptocurrencies have gained popularity over the past five to six years. Most recently, events like the FTX bankruptcy fueled the interest in regulation. Moreover, it is possible that the FTX event disrupting the cryptocurrency market was a factor in Silicon Valley Bank's failure. While several countries consider regulation, from soft regulation, like Japan, to more rigid standards, like the total ban in China, we study the effect of other news or events on cryptocurrency prices. This paper looks at historical closing prices for Bitcoin, the largest of the cryptocurrencies, and how prices react to various events. Then we focus on modeling the time series considering an 'event,' China's ban on cryptocurrency exchanges, using intervention analysis. We find that intervention analysis provides a reliable approach to quantifying the impact regulation may have on cryptocurrency pricing.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is widely viewed as a key driving force behind China’s exceptional growth performance in the last four decades. This paper investigates several questions posed by China’s success in capturing gains from FDI. What explains that success? Can other countries replicate it, or is it unique to China? What lessons are from China for other countries? China indeed has advantages in attracting FDI such as huge market and cheap labor, the well-designed policy and strategy, however, seem to play more important role in the successful story. Our empirical estimates support on four hypotheses: FDI and GDP growth in China positively interact each other; FDI is helpful to China’s technological progress, FDI promotes China’s industrial development, and FDI stimulates China’s manufactured exports.