This paper empirically investigates the relation between firm performance in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the need and likelihood of external financing to test the predictions of agency and stakeholder theories. Empirical results from Logit, Linear Probability Model, OLS and Firm fixed effects regressions indicate that CSR is negatively related to the likelihood and level of external financing. Further analysis indicates that CSR has a negative and significant effect on both net equity issued (NEI) and net debt issued (NDI), the two components of external financing. Overall, the empirical results support the predictions of agency theory.

This study empirically examines the effect of corporate governance on the relation between CEO power and firm leverage. Results from OLS and industry fixed effects regressions show that CEO power is positively associated with firm leverage. However, this association is driven by the strength of corporate governance as powerful CEOs tend to choose higher levels of debt only when corporate governance is strong. When corporate governance is weak, CEO power does not seem to have any effect on firm leverage. Overall, results indicate that strong corporate governance mitigates the severity of manager-shareholder conflicts and induces powerful CEOs to choose higher leverage.

The goal of this paper is to provide an overall presentation of corruption as occupational fraud building on the findings of an empirical study conducted in Greece. As uncertainty leads to increased levels of corruption, Greece was chosen due to the prolonged period of uncertainty the country faces, caused by the 2010 financial crisis and followed by the Covid pandemic crisis. 400 questionnaires reviewing corruption perception were gathered and analyzed by gender, age, marital status, education level, position, occupation, and monthly income, as well as urban vs rural area of residence. The findings of the study were compared with and critically evaluated against those of the previous studies for Greece. Respondents in age group 36-49 believe that if appropriate measures are taken it is possible to tackle corruption in the public sector, in contrast to people aged 18-35 who disagree completely. Residents of rural areas do not consider corruption to be a serious problem and are more willing to whistleblowing (in contrast to residents of urban areas). The study findings have important practical implications in the context of designing effective corruption reduction policies.

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.

The policy of ethnic equality and solidarity aims to narrow the ethnic gap and develop harmoniously. At the level of higher education, it should promote the equity of ethnic education. This paper uses the administrative data of undergraduate students from 2008 to 2015 in a liberal arts university in southwest China to study the differences, causes and dynamic trends in the scores of college students from different nationalities. The results show that compared with Han students, the average GPA of ethnic minority students is 0.13 points lower (equivalent to 0.23 and 0.3 standard deviations of the scores of ethnic minority and Han students), the fourth grade scores are 0.28 standard deviations lower, and 7.3% lower. This difference is more significant in the western region, especially in Xinjiang, Yunnan, Hubei and other provinces inhabited by ethnic minorities; Kazak and uygur are the nationalities with the biggest gap with han students; The difference between girls is more significant than that between boys. The "peer effect" and cultural distance between roommates are important reasons for this difference. Further analysis shows that although the ethnic differences in academic performance are gradually expanding, the growth rate tends to converge. The above conclusions are helpful to clarify the object and time of making national higher education policy, and also have important reference significance for primary and secondary education.

The low-carbon city pilot is an important policy for promoting sustainable development and addressing climate change. The level of green technological innovation is a significant driving force for China's transition to high-quality development and the realization of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals. This essay takes the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2008 to 2020 as the research sample, regards the number of urban green invention patent applications as a quantifiable indicator of the level of urban green technological innovation, and takes the policy of low-carbon city pilot as a quasi-natural experiment, and uses the difference-in-differences model to test the impact of low-carbon city pilot on the level of urban green technological innovation, and to investigate the mechanism of action within. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) The policy of low-carbon city pilot has an outstanding promotion effect on the level of urban technological innovation. (2) Using the mediating effect to analyze, it is found that the low-carbon city pilot policy can improve the level of urban green technological innovation through the development of green finance.

Since the establishment of neoclassical economics in the nineteenth century, there has been a debate in the economics profession over the role played by mathematics. Mathematics can add precision to discussion of real-world empirical problems in economics, but care needs to be taken when formalizing a problem to ensure that errors of translation are not made. Formalism allows one to be sure that a chain of reasoning is correct but applying conclusions back to an empirical science problem is fraught if an error of translation has been made. We illustrate such a difficulty in the context of Arrow’s impossibility theorem, specifically the mistranslation of the non-dictatorship condition. The notion of dictatorship entails causality, but causality does not correspond to the usage of the implication sign in mathematics or logic. We use the rules of logic to illustrate that the way that dictatorship is rendered mathematically in the impossibility theorem makes the existence of a dictator (or dictators) not only reasonable but likely.

The Public Welfare Foundation of a listed company is a non-profit organization with independent legal personality. It is established and funded by a listed company. The purpose of establishing a foundation for a listed company is generally to carry out charitable activities and make important contributions to charitable causes. However, due to the special power separation model, the autonomy of the foundation is poor, and there may be serious agency conflicts, ultimately leading to listed companies becoming beneficiaries of the foundation's charitable activities. We have found from the perspectives of commercial credit, sales, and cooperative relationships that social responsibility initiating organizations (listed companies) can obtain potential benefits from social responsibility fulfilling organizations (listed company public welfare foundations) in supply chain commercial relationships, that is, listed companies that establish public welfare foundations have good supply chain commercial relationships. When a listed company and a public welfare foundation have a close relationship in terms of fund donation, decision-making, business, and naming, the public welfare foundation has a strategic preference in selecting project names, project service areas, project beneficiaries, and project service areas. It prioritizes the interests of the listed company, enabling the listed company to obtain better supply chain business relationships.

Green innovation, as a sustainable development approach, can synergistically promote high-quality economic and social development. We select China's A-share-listed manufacturing corporations from 2011 to 2021 as the research sample to empirically study the impact of executive academic experience on green innovation in manufacturing corporations. Further, we test the relationship between executive academic experience and green innovation in manufacturing corporations under the mediating role of corporate social responsibility and the moderating role of heterogeneous environmental regulations. The study shows that (1) executive academic experience helps to promote green innovation in manufacturing corporations; (2) executive academic experience is conducive to promoting the fulfillment of social responsibility by manufacturing corporations; (3) corporate social responsibility plays a mediating role between executive academic experience and green innovation in manufacturing corporations; (4) environmental regulation positively moderates the relationship between executive academic experience and green innovation in manufacturing corporations, and both formal environmental regulation and informal environmental regulation positively moderated the promotion of green innovation in manufacturing corporations by executive academic experience.

This study employs empirical analysis using an econometric model that examines the interdependence among environmental degradation, exports, and economic development with energy use. It also provides an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) for selected South Asian economies utilizing time-series data. The findings reveal a long-term, stable equilibrium link between energy demand and pollution. There exists a positive relationship between structural factors and pollution. Moreover, this study constructs a model of exports and pollution from an interdependent perspective. The three perspectives are tested: the scale and structure of energy consumption considering the twin constraints of export-trade and pollution, and the scale of pollution in export-trade constraint. These results show that the increase in energy use leads to higher CO2 emissions amidst export volume. However, in the presence of income, the scale of effect lowers a little. The analysis also supports the presence of Kuznets curve for south-Asian economies. The results imply substantial scope for development in the energy use and pollution structure within South Asia's current export trade process. This development can be attained by regulating energy use and enhancing system efficacy without necessitating changes to the scale effect or structural effect.

The No.1 document of the Central Government of China has been on the theme of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" for nearly ten years, placing the solution of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" at the forefront of the Chinese government's work. Located in the Central Plains, Henan Province in China is one of the major agricultural provinces in China and plays an extremely important role in the field of agricultural production in China. This paper uses an empirical approach and the DEA-Malquist model to study the efficiency of rural public financial inputs to rural revitalisation in Henan Province. The results show that due to different levels of regional economic development, the efficiency of rural public finance investment in Henan Province in promoting rural revitalisation varies, and there is a phenomenon of unreasonable allocation of funds. At the same time, the region's agricultural base also has a greater impact on the efficiency of financial investment. Therefore, Henan Province should adjust measures according to the different regional economic levels and agricultural bases to improve the efficiency of the use of fiscal funds.

Public diplomacy is a significant factor in promoting policy communication, people-to-people bonds, and the protection of foreign assets between two nations, but there is little research on the economic worth of public diplomacy. Python was used to crawl the daily search frequency of "China", "African countries", and related terms to construct the heat index of China-Africa public diplomacy during 2011-2019, and a two-way fixed effect model was developed to examine the impact of public diplomacy on China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) in Africa. The empirical results show that public diplomacy has a considerable favorable effect on China’s OFDI in Africa, and after a series of robustness tests, the basic conclusion still holds. Heterogeneity tests show the investment promotion effect of public diplomacy is more pronounced in sub-Saharan Africa and that the promotion mechanism exhibits the characteristics of poverty alleviation and risk aversion. In addition, the promotion effect of public diplomacy on China’s OFDI becomes greater as time goes on. In terms of impact mechanisms, public diplomacy may promote OFDI by enhancing financing capacity and improving national governance. The research conclusion has policy implications for promoting China-Africa public diplomacy and investment cooperation in the new era.

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.

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.

This study analyses the effects of piped water on household food consumption per capita by adopting inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment and endogenous treatment effects approaches with data from the Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey carried out in 2013 and 2017. A complementary analysis of the effects on primary household income per working-age member is also conducted to give insights into the potential consequences. The study also conducts a robustness check by estimating the fixed effects of piped water utilising village panel data. The results suggest that households using piped water are likely to enjoy higher food consumption per capita, with a complementary finding demonstrating that the use of piped water is likely to increase household income per working-age member.

A large body of research has been dedicated to the study of relationships between social or cultural capital and educational outcomes in Western countries. However, few studies have examined these associations in a Chinese context, and even fewer have examined the effects of both forms of capital on educational outcomes simultaneously within a familial context in China. This study offers a reformulation of the associations between family social capital and family cultural capital on the educational outcomes of adolescents in both rural and urban China. Using the structural equation modelling approach and the China Education Panel Survey, this study sheds some new insights – the presence of significant compositional differences in both family social capital and family cultural capital between rural and urban Chinese adolescents, and differential effects of both forms of capital on educational outcomes were found. Family social capital presented larger positive effects on the academic effort and educational aspiration of rural adolescents while having no positive effects in facilitating the academic achievement of both rural and urban adolescents. Meanwhile, family cultural capital presented larger positive effects for urban adolescents on all educational outcomes as compared to their rural counterparts.

Economy has various stages which have been described as economic cycle and due to that the circulatory movement observed, some have faster cycle some have longer cycle which depends on numbers of factors and from that inflation is an important segment. Various terms have been described for inflation, in simple meaning when price of different commodities have been raised compared to previous stage due to depreciation of currency having lesser purchasing power. Perception of people towards inflation and its impact is the main crux of the study, because how the people think about technical terms is vital matter. The present study is based on primary data collected from 277 respondents through questionnaire from the Gujarat state India. The perception has been analysed from four statement have been asked in Lickert’s five scale form. The one-way ANOVA has been used to test the hypotheses and it has been found from that in first statement regarding price of commodity once increase then it will not decrease due to inflation has significant difference with place, education and age of the respondents and in rest three statement no significant differences have been observed.

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.

Income and population growth are key determinants of housing demand, while land use regulations are designed to affect housing supply. Previous studies of housing price determinants focus either on specific regulations in particular cities/regions, or on selective subsets of major cities and regulations. This study examines the impact of land use regulations on housing prices from 1989 to 2006 in an unusually large sample of 250 major US cities. Aside from factors that are commonly associated with housing demand (income, population growth and density), housing prices are found to be associated with local cost-increasing land use regulations (approval delays) and with statewide regulations. Since statewide regulations factor prominently into the results, specific examples of the impact of different types of land use regulations are provided for 5 cities in the state of Washington. The estimated increase in housing prices associated with regulations is, on average (over 250 cities), substantially larger than the effects of income and population growth. While the estimated dollar costs associated with regulations may be sizable at times, the results are remarkably consistent with previous studies that were based on smaller cross sections.

The expansion of urban infrastructure is an important indicator of agglomeration and a major factor in the deterioration of the urban environment. The investment in urban infrastructure is accompanied by the sealing of ground. The implementation of effective policies to reduce the practice of sealing ground is impeded by the existence of conflicting interests and fiscal disincentives. A significant challenge is the dearth of policy-relevant information. Conventional analysis considers urban outcome indicators in proportion to population and neglects non-linear distribution patterns, thus obscuring global regularities that contain important information. The study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of urban imperviousness through the lens of urban scaling. The present study employs Germany as a case study to examine the extent to which the parameters of the scaling function differ between two types of cities. District Affiliated Cities (DACs) and Administrative City Districts (ACDs), which are afforded greater fiscal autonomy. The analysis indicates that the amount of sealed land exhibited a notable increase between 2006 and 2018 in the ACDs. Calibration of the scaling functions for cities with the actual coefficient of the DAC control estimate and a global orientation exponent (5/6) resulted in a 16% reduction of sealed ground. In conclusion, urban scaling laws offer a valuable tool for analyzing the complex dynamics of urban imperviousness and its control costs, thereby contributing to the formulation of more effective urban policies and planning.