This paper examines whether sell-side analyst-affiliated investors trade stocks before their analysts release material information. Using class action lawsuits, I explore the pre-lawsuit periods and investigate how potentially informed analysts trade their covered firms. The event study finds that analyst-affiliated investors reduce their stockholdings of firms prior to their own analyst downgrades. The findings are more pronounced among investors employed by investment banks. The post-trading performance of analyst-affiliated investors suggests that they have superior information and front-run to maximize benefits.

How does democracy relate to the initial economic policy responses to Covid-19? Using a cross country analysis, we find that countries with a higher degree of democracy have stronger economic policy responses than their peers. However, when we separate monetary and financial policies from fiscal policy, democracy is not associated with the latter when we control for the income level of a country. Finally, for countries with lower levels of labor participation, high levels of income inequality are associated with weaker policy responses.

I present a theoretical model and an empirical approach for jointly estimating the effectiveness of fiscal policy and the stochastic process of sovereign interest rate shocks. The theoretical model has features relevant to small open and emerging economies. Interest rate shocks affect the ability of firms to finance payroll expenses. This theoretical feature creates a propagation mechanism for interest rate shocks and affects government spending multipliers. This paper proposes a strategy for jointly estimating government spending multipliers and the interest rate shock process parameters.

This paper aims to study and quantify the impact of agricultural exports on economic growth along with other variables in Tunisia. For that purpose, we estimate the relationship between GDP, agricultural exports, other exports, and imports by applying the ARDL approach under the period 1990-2020. The results show a negative and insignificant impact of agricultural exports on economic growth in the long and short run. Other exports negatively and significantly impact economic growth, while imports are found to have a positive impact on long-term economic growth. The findings have economic implications for sectors and activities that should be promoted to accelerate economic growth.

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.

We develop a four-party model involving banks, merchants, consumers, and platform firms to explain why large shopping malls can offer interest-free installment services to consumers. Using a collaboration between an online shopping platform firm and multiple banks to issue co-branded credit cards as a natural experiment, we find that consumers’ spending on the platform fulfills the requirements for merchants and banks to choose a four-way model. This study highlights the pivotal role of platform firms in the credit card market.

This study underscores the chronic issue of gender pay disparity that prevails across different STEM fields and educational qualification levels in Australia. Despite instances where women's incomes may align or even surpass men's, the broader pattern of inequality remains undeniable. The study advocates for targeted strategies to address gender pay gaps, particularly in fields like Engineering and Science, and emphasises the significance of cultivating inclusive work environments that recognise and reward contributions regardless of gender. This study serves as a critical call to action to rectify these inequities and promote a more balanced and equitable STEM landscape.

This paper investigates the effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on the systemic risk of the fintech industry. To achieve this goal, we first estimate the evolution of system-wide systemic risk using the CatFin method. We further examine whether EPU significantly affects systemic risk. Our findings demonstrate that the systemic risk of the fintech industry is time-variant and sensitive to major crisis events. Systemic risk tends to increase after major crises, especially the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. EPU has a considerable impact on systemic risk, notably during periods of turmoil.

The aim of this study is to solve the problem of labor allocation in cases where the company has fewer employees than the number of existing jobs based on the evaluation of work quality according to multiple objectives. Optimizing labor allocation not only benefits the company by maximizing the use of human resources, but also saves employees' energy. In addition, employees are assigned to tasks that match their skills and qualifications, maximizing their productivity. The research results show that the multi-objective decision-making algorithm based on the Hungarian algorithm is a suitable method to help leaders of companies solve the aforementioned problem text.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of political promotion on the productivity of manufacturing firms using the database of Chinese industrial enterprises from 1998 to 2007. We found that the political promotion of officials had a negative impact on manufacturing firm productivity, and this impact varied according to the characteristics of officials and enterprises. In addition, there was an age "ceiling effect" among Chinese municipal officials. Further research showed that the regional level of rule of law mitigated the negative effect of political promotion on the productivity of manufacturing firms. Finally, this paper makes policy recommendations for improving the promotion mechanism of officials, enhancing regional legalization, and transforming government functions.

The purpose of this research is to investigate how globalization affects innovation in Vietnam’s small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Utilizing Probit model and the data from Vietnam’s SMEs Survey during the period 2005-2015, the research examines the micro and macro effects of globalization on the innovation of these businesses. The main results show that at macro level, globalization is negatively correlated with innovation. However, at micro level, increasing competition pressure and knowledge transfer due to globalization are positively correlated with innovation of Vietnam’s SMEs.

The aim of this article is to model a negotiation between shareholders in high-technology-risk industries and local residents on the safety investments to be implemented. The methodology used is a Nash bargaining model, with a DE curve representing shareholders' dividend demands and an NS curve representing the safety demands of local residents' associations. The model is used to determine the level of safety investment required. One of the main results is that the estimation of a higher accident risk is accompanied by both a higher safety investment and a higher dividend payout. The most obvious implication of this result is that it is undoubtedly necessary to give greater weight to local residents in investment decision-making, in order to improve the well-being of all stakeholders.

This paper presents an analytical framework to assess the probability of achieving nationally determined contributions (NDC). The prediction model based on the Kaya identity is used to simulate the pathway of carbon emission until the target year. Applying the modified STIRPAT framework (named CO-STIRPAT) to data observed in South Korea shows that the probability that the predicted pathway with existing climate technology will stay above the NDC target pathway is significantly high. The result suggests that it is necessary to design a climate policy to improve energy intensity and carbon intensity by accelerating the advance in climate technology.

We extend the Shariah-compliant digital assets and Islamic Fintech literature through exploring the time-frequency associations between the volatility index (VIX) and cryptocurrencies (both Islamic and traditional). Employing wavelet-based technique, we find that Islamic cryptocurrencies demonstrate low or no coherency with stock market volatility compared to traditional cryptocurrencies (except Tether) during the whole time and frequency bands, highlighting the hedging capabilities of Islamic cryptocurrencies. Tether also serves the same against VIX, as there is a low or favorable link between these variables. Finally, our findings would be prolific to digital currency traders and investors in designing the portfolio strategies.

Applying the network analysis’ tools and a large dataset over 2000-2017, this paper provides insights to the patterns and structure of global and regional migration and remittances as well as the connection between these two phenomena inside a complex network. We reveal that even though the structure of migration and remittance networks is slightly altering, the major changes have only occurred in the intensive margin of the networks. In addition, there is a deepening intra-regional trend regarding the structure of migration communities. By contrast, we observe an instability in the structure of migration and remittance communities formed around the U.S.

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.

We empirically address the effects of monetary policy on the housing market in China using a novel Time-Varying Parameter VARX model. We show that an expansionary monetary has positive effects on the housing market, while during COVID-19, the effects are approaching to zero or even negative. In addition, the effects of the LPR policy are strong and even larger than that of COVID-19. Relative impulse response functions in the shorter and longer time horizons are dynamic and especially during COVID. This paper also contributes to the housing literature to show that COVID-19 can block the transmission of monetary policy.

By introducing time to build, which creates a time-lag between government investment and the accumulation of productive capital, into an analysis of fiscal stimulus to the economy with financial frictions, we find that the effectiveness of fiscal policy is dampened. While the weakening effects of time to build become significantly weaker alongside with a higher fraction of government bonds allocated to leverage-constrained banks, which can be explained by a high correlation between time to build and financial frictions in both worsening balance sheet conditions of banks. Furthermore, the stimulus effects of public investment become stronger associated with shorter time-to-build period.

Utilizing a 2021 nationally representative sample of 7,504 White-owned employer businesses (WOBs) in the United States of America (USA), the extent, and the determinants of WOB business registration are estimated. Business registration is employed as a proxy for business in/formality. Approximately one-fifth (22.5%) of all employer WOBs are unregistered or informal business concerns hidden from government purview. The primary determinants of employer WOB informality are business size (annual revenues under $500,000 and few paid employees), a business owner with less than a four-year college degree, and an upbringing in a lower- or middle-class environment, among other findings. Notably, this research reveals the white lie of the magnitude of White-owned employer business informality in the USA.

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.