International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090251

Authors: Salem Al Mustanyir

Despite extensive research on geopolitical risk and financial markets, limited evidence exists on whether and how different types of attacks on energy facilities and related infrastructure are reflected in the immediate responses of financial markets, and whether the continued diversification of these attacks influences the pattern and behavior of financial market responses. This study addresses this gap by examining the differential impact of five categories of attacks—infrastructure, ports and vessels, cyberattacks, pipelines, and security-related incidents—on U.S. financial markets. A systematic review identified attacks between 2015 and 2025, comprising 56 events and 168 observations across the three-day event window, and OLS and panel regressions with the daily closing prices of four major U.S. stock indices (S&P 500, NASDAQ, NYSE, and Dow Jones) were employed to examine abnormal returns. Methodologically, the study contributes by disaggregating attacks into distinct categories, revealing that treating them as homogeneous shocks obscures meaningful differences in market sensitivity. Pipeline and maritime disruptions generate the most consistent negative effects, while production infrastructure attacks yield limited reactions, as spare capacity and reserves can offset localized damage. Transportation disruptions are harder to compensate due to restoration time and insurer reluctance to operate in high risk zones. While attacks trigger negative responses, rapid information dissemination helps investors reassess risks and contain spillovers. These insights can assist policymakers and investors in adopting more measured decisions that limit unnecessary contagion while emphasizing transportation security in risk management.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090250

Authors: Huong Nguyen Thi Quynh Oanh Vu Thi Kim Dinh Nguyen Binh

This study investigates the nonlinear relationship between sectoral loan diversification and credit risk in Vietnamese commercial banks. Using a balanced panel of 14 banks over 2012–2025, comprising 196 bank-year observations, the study measures diversification through a Shannon Entropy Index based on a harmonized ten-sector classification and measures credit risk using the reported non-performing loan ratio. The relationship is examined using conventional panel estimators, two-step System GMM, and bias-corrected LSDV models, together with alternative diversification measures. The results provide suggestive evidence of a U-shaped association: diversification is associated with lower credit risk at relatively low levels but with higher credit risk beyond a conditional turning point. This pattern is supported by the System GMM and small-sample bias-corrected estimates, although it is not statistically robust to the HHI-based measure. The findings therefore indicate that the effects of diversification depend on both its extent and measurement and should not be interpreted as identifying a universal optimal threshold. Banks and supervisors should assess sectoral diversification alongside cross-sector risk correlations, underwriting expertise, and monitoring capacity.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090249

Authors: Lingpeng Kong Xuemeng Guo Hanzhong Zheng

ESG has profoundly influenced asset pricing and resource allocation in capital markets. However, existing research largely focuses on the economic consequences of absolute ESG levels, with limited attention paid to how the gap between corporate ESG performance and aspiration levels—the ESG performance aspiration gap—is related to the behavior of information intermediaries in the capital market. Using a sample of A-share non-financial listed companies on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2013 to 2024, this paper empirically examines the relation between the ESG performance aspiration gap and institutional investors’ site visits and its potential underlying channel. The findings are as follows. First, the ESG performance aspiration gap is positively correlated with institutional investors’ site visits. This conclusion remains robust after a series of robustness tests. Second, the mechanism analysis is consistent with information asymmetry serving as a potential channel linking the ESG performance aspiration gap and institutional investors’ site visits. Third, the moderating effect analysis shows that both marketization level and analyst coverage negatively moderate the positive relation between the ESG performance aspiration gap and institutional investors’ site visits. This paper extends the research boundaries of the economic consequences of ESG and institutional investors’ information search behavior, providing a new theoretical explanation for how the capital market responds to the dynamic changes in corporate ESG performance. It also offers policy implications for improving the ESG information disclosure system and enhancing the information efficiency of the capital market.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090248

Authors: Andi Saputra Wahyudin Zarkasyi Harry Suharman John Liberty Hutagaol

Background/Motivation: Tax avoidance represents a persistent governance and fiscal challenge in emerging-market economies; however, its role as a mediating channel between firm-level strategic determinants and profitability remains underexplored in the Indonesian multinational context. Objective: This study examines whether transfer pricing, corporate social responsibility (CSR), managerial ownership, institutional ownership, and earnings management influence firm profitability through the intermediating mechanism of tax avoidance in Indonesian manufacturing multinational corporations (MNCs). Method: Using panel data from 31 IDX-listed MNCs over 2018–2023 (186 firm-year observations), we apply random effects panel regression and Sobel mediation tests, with robustness checks using Book-Tax Difference (BTD) as an alternative proxy, a lagged-variable specification, and an extended control variable set including financial leverage, capital intensity, sales growth, and year fixed effects. Endogeneity is assessed via the Durbin–Wu–Hausman test. Results: None of the five determinants significantly influences GAAP ETR, and tax avoidance does not significantly mediate any determinant–profitability relationship. Only institutional ownership exerts a significant direct effect on profitability (β = 0.002381, p < 0.05). Contribution: This is the first study to comprehensively test a five-determinant simultaneous mediation model in the Indonesian MNC context. The findings reveal that the mediation architecture commonly documented in developed-market contexts does not hold in Indonesian MNCs—attributable to institutional enforcement gaps, concentrated ownership structures, and the symbolic nature of CSR in emerging markets—with direct implications for Indonesian tax policy and corporate governance reform.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090247

Authors: Okechukwu Enyeribe Njoku Seonhye Jeong Ana Belén Tulcanaza-Prieto Hong Geun Yoon Younghwan Lee

In this study, we examine whether dividend policy is associated differently with accrual-based earnings management and real earnings management measured through abnormal operating cash flow. We analyze 8839 firm-year observations from 569 non-financial firms listed in the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) market from 1996 to 2024 using firm and year fixed-effects regressions with firm-clustered standard errors. We find no consistent association between dividend yield and accrual-based manipulation, but we find a negative association with abnormal operating-cash-flow manipulation. As dividend yield rises, the within-firm relation between the two measures becomes weaker. Payout burden relative to operating profit provides the primary evidence for this pattern, while the free-cash-flow and operating-cash-flow measures provide corroborating evidence. Cash holdings provide suggestive conditioning evidence, ownership concentration has no reliable moderating role, and the exploratory chaebol analysis is statistically inconclusive because only 267 affiliated firm-years limit power. Alternative real-activity measures do not reproduce the core result, so the evidence is concentrated in abnormal operating cash flow. These findings represent conditional within-firm associations, not managerial intent or a causal effect of dividend policy. These empirical patterns suggest that boards and regulators may consider dividends together with accrual and operating-cash-flow indicators, especially when payouts absorb a large share of internal resources.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090246

Authors: Ikrame Missaoui Beyyoudh Ángel-Sabino Mirón Sanguino Jose C. Corchado Elena Muñoz-Muñoz

Sustainable finance is expected to mobilize private capital toward the Sustainable Development Goals, yet retail investors may not convert favorable environmental attitudes into sustainable portfolio choices. This study examines adult respondents’ preferences for investment funds linked to Sustainable Development Goal 15 (Life on Land), focusing on environmental values, the perceived credibility of sustainable funds, perceived individual impact, expected return, and risk. A quantitative, cross-sectional survey was administered to adults and included eight hypothetical investment-choice scenarios. The final analytical sample comprised 105 respondents. Spearman correlations, robust ordinary least squares models, and clustered logistic comparisons were used. Environmental values, credibility, and perceived impact were positively interrelated, but none significantly predicted the number of SDG 15-linked choices, either directly or through moderation. Respondents selected sustainable alternatives in 4.33 of eight scenarios on average (54.17%). Sustainable-choice frequencies differed substantially across the presented scenario groups: 67.62% when the SDG 15-linked alternative offered higher return and lower risk, 46.03% under lower return and lower risk, and 39.05% under higher return and higher risk. Because return and risk varied simultaneously across fixed scenarios, these differences should not be interpreted as separate attribute effects. The findings reveal a descriptive attitude–behavior gap and are consistent with a three-dimensional view of investment choice in which sustainability is considered alongside return and risk. However, because these attributes were not independently varied, their separate contributions cannot be identified. Fund managers and regulators should combine verifiable biodiversity outcomes with transparent, financially competitive products.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090245

Authors: Xiaoyuan Sun Yu Zhang Swarn Chatterjee

This study develops an integrated conceptual framework to examine the association between investors’ subjective perception of being targeted by investment fraud and their adoption of protective coping behaviors. Drawing on the transactional model of stress and coping, the paper proposes that perceived fraud targeting acts as a stressor that increases fraud-related worry, which in turn motivates behavioral responses. Using merged data from the 2024 FINRA Investor Survey and the National Financial Capability Study (N = 2198), the study employs mediation analysis with OLS and Poisson regression models. The results show that perceived fraud targeting significantly increases both fraud worry and protective behaviors, with worry partially mediating this relationship. Additional findings indicate that investor identity reduces worry, while family financial socialization and market trust promote protective actions. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that objective investment knowledge moderates these pathways. The study highlights the importance of subjective risk perception in shaping proactive fraud prevention behaviors and offers implications for policymakers, educators, and financial advisors.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090244

Authors: Roberto Rodrigues Loiola Ludmila de Melo Souza Herbert Kimura

This study examines which bond-level, issuer-level, and institutional characteristics are associated with external recognition or alignment in the global corporate green bond market and whether these associations differ between Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI) alignment and formal CBI certification. The database contains 6009 green bond issuances by 822 corporate issuers between 2016 and 2025. The main complete-case analysis uses 4875 bonds issued by 682 firms and estimates a multilevel logistic model with issuer random intercepts, Fitch-rating, sector, and issuance-year controls. Larger issuance amounts are positively associated with external recognition or alignment across every specification. Issuance in a developed market and average operating margin, which is treated as an exploratory covariate, are also positively associated with the broad outcome, whereas issuer size is negatively associated; however, these relationships are more sensitive to outcome definition, temporal measurement, or estimator choice. Financial leverage and credit-rating categories show no consistent association. Separate aligned-versus-self-labelled, certified-versus-aligned, and multilevel multinomial analyses reveal substantial heterogeneity between CBI alignment and formal certification, confirming that the two categories should not be interpreted as equivalent verification mechanisms. These findings identify transaction scale as the most stable correlate of external recognition or alignment and show that issuance-market context and issuer characteristics operate differently across recognition categories.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090243

Authors: Arindam Bandopadhyaya Surjit Tinaikar

Financial econometrics has expanded rapidly in recent decades, giving researchers many new tools for empirical analysis. Yet empirical findings often remain sensitive to modeling choices, sample construction, and specification decisions, suggesting that many disagreements arise not from estimation methods alone but from deeper limitations in what data can reveal. This survey organizes financial econometrics around three issues that determine the credibility of empirical inference: identification, dependence, and uncertainty. Identification concerns whether economic quantities such as causal effects, risk premia, and structural parameters can be credibly recovered from observable data. Dependence recognizes that assets, firms, and markets are interconnected, reducing the amount of independent information contained in financial data. Uncertainty captures not only sampling variation but also model misspecification, measurement error, and competing explanations. We review how these problems arise in asset pricing, corporate finance, ESG, and risk management and discuss implications for empirical design and inference.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090242

Authors: Wenxuan Jin Di Yuan Peilin Wang Sufang Li

Energy transition is central to both economic development and climate-change mitigation and has become a shared global challenge. Given the close relationship between conventional energy prices and the development of the new-energy industry, this study investigates systemic risk spillovers among three crude-oil futures, two natural-gas futures, and five Chinese new-energy sector indices. We employ a quantile time-frequency-connectedness framework and an out-of-sample-validated link-prediction model to assess both realized spillovers and potential changes in the network structure. The results reveal that network connectedness is time-varying and asymmetric across quantiles, with short-horizon connectedness accounting for the majority of average system-wide connectedness. Overall connectedness also increases markedly during major crisis episodes. INE crude-oil futures and both natural-gas futures are net receivers of shocks, whereas WTI and Brent crude-oil futures consistently act as net transmitters, with Brent playing the dominant role under extreme market conditions. As the investment horizon lengthens, the solar sector shifts from a net risk receiver to a net risk transmitter. In the predicted network, the solar sector emerges as the market most likely to initiate new short-term spillover links. This finding reflects a prospective, model-implied tendency rather than a causal relationship. These findings offer useful implications for energy market policy, portfolio risk management, and investment decisions involving new-energy companies.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090241

Authors: Chaiyathad Phutthadet Ausawatap Akartwipart Chainarong Kaewmuangmoon

Whether green-bond issuance is associated with shareholder value remains unclear in small, concentrated emerging markets, where signaling and information-asymmetry channels from developed-market studies may not operate the same way. This study examines short-term stock-market reactions and medium-term firm valuation associated with green-bond issuance among the full population of 20 eligible Thai listed issuers: 34 analytical issuance events from May 2019 to May 2026, and an annual panel of 20 firms observed from 2015 to 2025, comprising 220 repeated firm-year observations and 187 complete cases in the baseline regression. Event-study models find no statistically detectable average abnormal return around the issue date, robust across benchmark models and event windows; two-way fixed-effect panel regressions, likewise, find no statistically detectable average association with Tobin’s Q, with a confidence interval wide enough to admit economically meaningful effects in either direction. The matching and selection analyses remain inconclusive. The IV model has a weak first stage and is therefore reported only as a diagnostic. Because the design identifies within-firm variation among issuers, rather than a comparison with matched non-issuers, the results should be read as associations, rather than causal effects. The study provides census-based evidence that, in Thailand’s small and concentrated green-bond market, a green label may not yet carry detectable average value relevance for shareholders.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090240

Authors: Joel Alderete Velita Kerwin Chávez Vera Ascención Tomás Alcalá Victor Hugo Bazan

Access to finance remains a significant challenge for women entrepreneurs, even as new financial alternatives and technologies have emerged. This study examines how research on women’s entrepreneurial finance evolved between 2006 and 2026. Using Bibliometrix and Biblioshiny, 327 articles retrieved from Scopus and Web of Science were analyzed in terms of scientific development, intellectual structure, thematic evolution, and international collaboration, including network centrality, density, and comparisons across economic-development groups. The results show that the field has moved from a primary focus on gender and access to capital toward a broader agenda in which financial inclusion, crowdfunding, microfinance, and digitalization have gained prominence. At the same time, traditional research streams on gender and finance coexist with research on alternative mechanisms for accessing capital. Three complementary intellectual foundations were identified: gender-related mechanisms in financing decisions, crowdfunding and alternative entrepreneurial finance, and structural and institutional conditions shaping access to financial resources. International collaboration also differs across economic contexts, with high-income economies showing denser and more internationally connected research networks. The findings reveal an expanding field in which new financial opportunities coexist with persistent gender inequalities and provide an integrated basis for future research on AI-enabled financing, cross-context institutional differences, and green and sustainable finance.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090239

Authors: Jun Wang Langlei Ji Shaobin Chen

We examine how restricting high-frequency trading (HFT) affects stock liquidity in China’s A-share market. Using China’s 2024 Provisions on Program Trading in the Securities Market (Trial) as a quasi-natural experiment, we construct a stock-level high-frequency trading intensity index from tick-level order data and apply a difference-in-differences design. We find that stocks with greater pre-policy HFT exposure experience significantly larger reductions in quoted and effective spreads following the regulatory announcement. First-stage tests further show that several HFT-related trading behaviors decline more strongly among high-exposure stocks, providing behavioral support for the treatment measure. The liquidity effect is state-dependent, with significantly larger improvements following negative-return periods. Cross-sectional analyses further show stronger effects for stocks with higher pre-policy volatility and for margin-tradable stocks. These findings suggest that the liquidity benefits of algorithmic trading regulation are particularly pronounced when and where liquidity is more fragile, providing new evidence on the role of HFT regulation in retail-dominated emerging markets.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090238

Authors: Sadia Noor Khan Rina Akter Supti Khondokar Jilhajj

This study aims to analyze the impact of fintech adoption on the SME financing of scheduled banks in Bangladesh. Data has been collected from 30 scheduled banks operating in Bangladesh from 2013 to 2023. The data were analyzed using the statistical software STATA 14.0. Independent variables, namely digitalized branches, ATM booths, mobile banking, online banking, and agent banking, have been chosen as proxies for financial technologies. The findings reveal that fintech variables are statistically significant in affecting SME financing, indicating that fintech has made sharing information easier and boosted fundraising activities. Moreover, the endogeneity problem has been checked using the GMM method. This study might include new dimensions to the research on the impact of fintech adoption on SME financing, as it is suggested that the use of fintech bridges the financing gap between banks and SMEs. It is also advised that bankers should receive training in online banking and have solid working knowledge of these financial technologies. Besides, this study will be beneficial to governments, banks, and other concerned regulators in understanding how to implement the benefits of financial technology for the development of banking and SME sectors.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090237

Authors: Bostjan Zrim

This study examines the intersection of multinational enterprise (MNE) strategy and international financial management, focusing on how the geographic diversification of tangible assets, intangible assets, and growth opportunities is associated with MNEs’ cash holdings, an important component of their financial strategy. Panel regression models were estimated using data from 576 MNEs headquartered in 28 countries. The findings suggest that the geographic diversification of intangible assets and growth opportunities attenuates the positive associations of these assets with cash holdings. In contrast, the geographic diversification of tangible assets attenuates the negative association between tangible assets and cash holdings. Overall, the findings suggest that MNEs’ cash holdings cannot be fully understood by examining only firm-level determinants, such as growth opportunities and multinationality, but also by considering the geographic diversification of different types of assets.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090236

Authors: Eze Okechukwu Agha Festus Olatunbode Ashogbon Japhet Osazefua Imhanzenobe

This study investigates the impact of FinTech on the monetary policy dynamics of the four major payment channels of banks in Nigeria, namely the automated teller machine (ATM), mobile payment (MOBPAY), web payment (WEBPAY), and Point-of-Sale (POS), from 2012 to 2025. The paper employs the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to examine the relationships between the variables, whilst conducting a robustness check using dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS). The study shows that POS transaction values have a positive and statistically significant impact on both the monetary policy rate (MPR) and the treasury bill rate (TBR). The findings also indicate that the savings deposit rate (SDR) increases both the MPR and the TBR, whereas the maximum lending rate (MLR) does not affect these policy rates. Mobile payments lead to significantly lower treasury bill and monetary policy rates. These findings empirically affirm that FinTech channels have expanded over the years, driven by the central bank’s cashless policy and banks’ response to the introduction of FinTech start-ups into the financial system. Thus, FinTech channels are important determinants of monetary policy transmission, justifying the need for the monetary authority to examine channel-specific sensitivities to its effectiveness in Nigeria’s fast-growing digital payment ecosystem.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090235

Authors: Fayçal Djebari Kahina Mehidi Khelifa Mazouz

Financial networks are typically summarised by a single average-regime connectedness estimate that treats transmission as symmetric across calm and turbulent markets. Using a quantile vector autoregression on nine European equity indices from 2000 to 2026, we show that crash-regime connectedness is not an episodic crisis response but a persistent premium over the normal regime, holding steady across nearly six thousand rolling windows. We introduce Geopolitical Risk Realised Volatility, a within-month measure of geopolitical risk dispersion distinct from its level, and show that it predicts a delayed, statistically robust decoupling of tail connectedness, modest in magnitude and specific to the crash regime, that adds information beyond GPR Act’s level alone. A quantile-specific structural break test shows that the Brexit referendum permanently shifted the United Kingdom’s net shock-transmission position within the European equity network. These shocks affect connectedness only in the crash regime, a pattern an average-regime estimate does not capture.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090234

Authors: Fathi Jouini Abdullatif Saud Al Naim

This study examines the joint and interactive effects of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and digital transformation on firm value by using a sample of 64 non-financial firms listed on the Saudi Exchange over 2020–2024. The empirical analysis employs panel data techniques, feasible generalized least squares (FGLS), Driscoll–Kraay standard errors, and two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimation. The results show that ESG performance is positively associated with firm value, which suggests that capital markets reward firms for sustainability activities. Digital transformation also shows a positive association with firm value and is consistent with its role as a driver of firm valuation. The positive interaction between ESG and digital transformation suggests that digitalization reinforces the association between ESG practices and firm value. The findings remain robust across alternative model specifications and firm value measures. Digital transformation is measured with a text-based disclosure index built from digital-related keywords in annual reports. The index captures disclosed digital orientation rather than realized digital capability, so a high disclosure frequency may partly reflect signalling or impression management rather than fully deployed digital infrastructure. The findings show the importance of adding digital strategies to sustainability practices and provide useful implications for managers, investors, and policymakers under Saudi Vision 2030.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090233

Authors: Ngan Bich Nguyen

This study examines whether environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores among financial institutions across Asia, Europe, and the United States are converging toward a common global standard or settling into distinct regional regimes. Using a panel of 843 publicly listed banks and financial firms over fifteen fiscal years (7754 firm-year observations), the analysis applies sigma-convergence, cross-sectional beta-convergence, and a dynamic panel specification with firm and year fixed effects. Within-region ESG dispersion has narrowed significantly in Europe and the United States but widened in Asia, even as all three regions display strong beta-convergence, with laggard firms closing the gap within about a year. A pooled model with region interaction terms and a Chow test, both of which impose the regional grouping in advance, reject the hypothesis of a single global convergence process, a conclusion independently corroborated by a model-free Phillips–Sul log-t test and clustering algorithm, supporting a club convergence interpretation in which European and Asian financial firms gravitate toward a materially higher steady-state ESG level than their American counterparts, whose mean score remains twenty points lower at the most recent fiscal year. Robustness checks across all three regions, including industry subsamples in Europe, developed versus emerging market banks in Asia, and coverage-depth splits in the United States, confirm findings are not artifacts of sample composition. These results imply that benchmarks calibrated to a single global ESG threshold would misclassify firms operating under different regional convergence clubs.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090231

Authors: Tshepang Dithate Nombali Ntombifuthi Mngomezulu Oladipo Olalekan David

The transport sector is central to South Africa’s economic development by enabling trade, connectivity, and productivity. As a key source of fiscal revenue, value-added tax (VAT) influences sectoral performance through its effects on production costs, investment, and demand. This study empirically examines the impact of VAT on the performance of South Africa’s transport sector using annual data from 1993 to 2024 obtained from the Quantec EasyData database. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model was employed to assess both short- and long-run relationships among transport sector value added, VAT revenue, gross capital formation, and GDP expenditure. The results reveal significant negative short- and long-run effects of VAT on transport sector performance in South Africa. However, investment in physical capital exerts less pressure on the performance of the transport sector in South Africa. These findings highlight that although VAT is a vital revenue source, increases in the rate may impose short-term and long-term cost pressures on the transport sector. Policymakers should therefore design VAT reforms that balance fiscal sustainability with sectoral competitiveness to promote inclusive economic growth.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090232

Authors: Adrian Cantemir Călin

This paper investigates the temporal organization of speculative bubble regimes in the Romanian equity market. Using daily data for six Romanian equity indices from 12 August 2016 to 20 October 2025, the study constructs backward supremum augmented Dickey–Fuller (BSADF)-implied bubble episodes, episode starts, burst events, and bubble-continuation measures. The analysis examines whether speculative regimes are persistent, synchronized across market segments, and temporally concentrated in their termination. The results show substantial heterogeneity in bubble incidence and duration across indices but also clear episodes of synchronization, with several periods in which four or five indices are simultaneously classified as being in a bubble state. Daily-panel regressions suggest that temporal structure is more visible in burst timing and bubble continuation than in unconditional bubble incidence or episode initiation. Collapse-clustering tests provide suggestive evidence of burst concentration over 20-trading-day windows. The findings emphasize persistence, synchronization, and clustered unwinding in emerging-market bubble dynamics.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090230

Authors: Qian Zhang Jiaqi Zheng Tianyi Yang Kaqian Zeng Xufeng Zhang Yuanying Chi

Forecasting USD/CNY exchange rate volatility is of substantial practical significance for the management of cross-border capital flows and the formulation of monetary policies. In recent years, multiple external shocks arising from China–US geopolitical tensions and sharp fluctuations in the international crude oil market have become increasingly intertwined. Traditional forecasting models are often unable to capture such sudden risk signals in a timely manner, while a single model is also insufficiently adaptable to multi-scale volatility structures. To address these challenges, this paper develops a deep-learning-based dynamic forecasting framework that integrates a China–US geopolitical risk feature system (CUGRI) with international oil price shock signals. Specifically, CUGRI is constructed from news texts published by 15 authoritative Chinese and US media outlets, combining a finance-specific language model with a geopolitical-domain sentiment lexicon to build a five-dimensional daily risk quantification feature system. At the modeling level, this paper proposes a GRU-BiLSTM-Transformer dynamic fusion model, which adaptively assigns fusion weights according to the recent forecasting performance of each sub-model. All empirical analyses are implemented under the Python programming environment with the PyTorch deep learning framework. Using nearly ten years of daily data, this paper conducts out-of-sample forecasting tests. The empirical results show that the proposed dynamic fusion model achieves an out-of-sample R2 of 0.342, while reducing RMSE and MAE by 4.01% and 3.72%, respectively, relative to the best-performing baseline model. CUGRI exhibits significant incremental predictive value, with forecasting gains substantially higher during periods of elevated geopolitical risk than under normal conditions. Oil price shocks provide complementary predictive information, and the dynamic weighting mechanism further improves the accuracy of combined forecasts. In practice, the findings are relevant to cross-border firms and financial institutions when tracking changes in geopolitical and energy-market risks and adjusting foreign-exchange hedging strategies. For monetary and regulatory authorities, the model helps identify periods when external shocks may amplify USD/CNY volatility and supports exchange-rate risk surveillance and macro-financial stability analysis.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090229

Authors: Elias Mashayamombe Charis Harley Thulane Paepae

Black-box portfolio models can produce allocation weights without a reconstructable account of how market signals, constraints, and risk controls shaped the decision. This study introduces the Constraint-Aware Portfolio Reasoning Network (CAPRN), a neuro-symbolic-inspired framework for intrinsic, decision-level explainability in portfolio allocation. Its implemented configuration uses a one-layer long short-term memory encoder and exposes factor relevance, constraint pressure, temporal state, rule-bias effects, and asset-level preference scores before producing long-only, fully invested weights. Conditional value-at-risk, a shuffled mini-batch wealth-path surrogate, and an equal-weight-deviation regularizer connect these variables to risk controls, while chronological drawdown and realized turnover are evaluated separately out of sample. CAPRN is evaluated on a ten-asset universe using strict walk-forward testing, performance measures, ablations, decision narratives, deletion and insertion diagnostics, counterfactual constraint tests, and explanation-quality metrics. CAPRN remains economically viable out of sample but neither uniformly outperforms equal-weight and mean–variance benchmarks nor exhibits statistically significant return or Sharpe-ratio dominance. Its internal variables are inspectable and stress-testable, although its factor-indicator fidelity is weaker than the marginal attribution performance of SHAP and LIME. CAPRN should therefore be viewed as an auditable allocation and governance layer rather than a benchmark-dominant production optimizer. Its principal contribution is a reproducible reasoning pathway connecting market information, constraint responses, risk controls, and final portfolio weights for practitioner oversight and regulatory reporting.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090228

Authors: Murat Erdoğan Nesrin Alkan Eda Oruç Erdoğan Eren Durmuş-Özdemir Şefika Özdemir

The film industry presents one of the most capital-intensive and financially uncertain environments within cultural markets. While prior research has predominantly measured success through box office revenue, return on investment (ROI) offers a more meaningful lens for producers and investors operating under conditions of extreme distributional skewness and limited predictability. This study examines which observable film- and audience-related characteristics determine whether a film generates above- or below-median ROI, using a dataset of 3153 films drawn from The Movie Database (TMDB, 1916–2017). Drawing on ensemble learning methods and SHAP-based decomposition to identify the direction and magnitude of variable effects, the study compares Random Forest, XGBoost, and CatBoost models, with Random Forest achieving the strongest predictive performance. We find that audience engagement volume, proxied by total vote count, is the strongest signal of realised investment efficiency in the classification framework, ranking ahead of production budget and content characteristics; in a continuous-outcome robustness check, the ordering of engagement and budget is reversed, so that the two emerge as the joint leading predictors while their relative rank depends on the specification. Because engagement metrics become observable only after theatrical release, the framework is explanatory rather than pre-release predictive in nature and speaks primarily to post-release investment decisions. SHAP analysis further indicates non-linear threshold effects, suggesting that audience engagement and production budget influence investment outcomes differently across value ranges. In the fitted model, the contribution of production budget diminishes beyond an approximate log-budget value corresponding to 25 million USD, a pattern indicating that higher expenditure is associated with lower investment efficiency within this sample rather than a causally identified turning point. Genre, by contrast, contributes relatively little to investment outcomes once audience visibility and financial scale are accounted for. These findings have implications for the economics of cultural markets: financial performance in film appears at least as strongly tied to audience reach as to production scale, and more strongly than to content type, which qualifies budget-centric investment heuristics prevalent in the industry.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090227

Authors: Yingge Ma Hu Zhang Zihuan Gao

This paper examines whether and how analyst logical inconsistency affects the stock price crash risk in China’s A-share market. The sample includes 3784 listed non-financial companies. The final sample comprises 12,460 firm-year observations from 2016 to 2023. Specifically, we employ the open source Qwen1.5-14B-Chat model, an instruction-tuned generative large language model, to measure analyst logical inconsistency, classify the sentiment expressed in analyst reports, and determine the differences between earnings forecasts and textual tone. Using a panel fixed-effect model for basic regression, and applying two-stage least squares and propensity score matching to deal with endogenous problems, we find that analyst logical inconsistency significantly increases the stock price crash risk. The results remain robust to alternative variable definitions, additional control variables, alternative sample periods, and more stringent fixed-effects specifications. The mechanism test shows that the analyst logical inconsistency increases the stock price crash risk through three channels: increased financial risk, reduced investment efficiency, and degraded information disclosure quality. Heterogeneity analysis also shows that this positive impact is strongest in companies with high media coverage, good corporate reputation and low ESG performance. Our research results are helpful to the study of information intermediaries and stock price crash risk by introducing measures for the quality of analyst reports based on large language models, and provide useful suggestions for regulators and investors in emerging markets.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14090226

Authors: Ulaş Ünlü Nuri Avşarlıgil İbrahim Taylan Dörtyol Halil Özekicioğlu İhsan Yapar

This study examines whether the relationship between financial development and energy intensity in the European Union depends on the level of digitalization. Using a balanced panel of 27 EU member states over the period 2007–2019, we estimate two-way fixed effects models with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors and an interaction term between financial development and digitalization. The results indicate that financial development alone is not meaningfully associated with within-country variation in energy intensity. By contrast, its interaction with digitalization is negatively associated with energy intensity under the preferred Driscoll–Kraay specification, indicating that the estimated association between financial development and energy intensity becomes more negative as digitalization rises. The interaction provides the largest incremental increase in within-R2 among the sequential specifications, although the absolute improvement is modest (Δ within-R2 = 0.016) and its statistical significance is sensitive to country-clustered inference and country-specific linear trend controls. Renewable energy provides limited additional explanatory power without altering the main relationship. Overall, these results are best interpreted as suggestive rather than definitive evidence of a conditional association, underscoring the importance of considering digitalization when assessing the relationship between financial development and energy intensity.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080225

Authors: Hui Chai Yang Gao

This paper focuses on China’s gold futures market. Using East Money investor posts and the FinBERT2 model, we construct a multidimensional sentiment indicator comprising overall sentiment, positive/negative intensity, and six fine-grained sentiment categories (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and neutral). With high-frequency 5 min data, we compute realized volatility and, within the HAR-RV framework, systematically examine the in-sample and out-of-sample predictive power, asymmetry, and inter-period heterogeneity of sentiment dimensions. The results show that investor sentiment significantly and robustly predicts volatility, with gains increasing over horizons, relying on multi-scale cumulative effects. Predictions are asymmetric: negative sentiment drives volatility while positive sentiment does not. Among fine-grained sentiments, happiness and anger are strongest; fear and sadness are ineffective; and disgust has an effect only in long-term routine forecasts but fails under extreme volatility. During the Russia–Ukraine conflict, sadness replaces happiness and anger as the dominant predictor (long-term MSE: 0.01579 vs. benchmark 0.04384). In trending bull markets, the predictive power of happiness and positive/negative intensity is amplified (full-sample R2 gains: 2.70% and 2.89%, vs. 17.08% and 9.69% in bull periods). This study reveals the multidimensional, asymmetric effects and intertemporal heterogeneity of sentiment on forecasts of gold futures volatility, providing a theoretical and empirical foundation for regime-adaptive early-warning systems and risk management.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080224

Authors: Natavan Namazova Zivar Zeynalova Gunay Musayeva Elkhan Richard Sadik-Zada

Health taxation has become an increasingly important fiscal policy instrument for promoting healthier consumption and improving public welfare. However, limited evidence exists regarding public perceptions of health taxation in countries where such policies have not yet been implemented. This study develops and empirically tests an integrated behavioral framework that examines the relationships among perceived health taxation, healthy consumption behavior, and sustainable public welfare, while considering the moderating roles of chronic disease in the family, trust in public health policy, and generation. Data were collected through a structured questionnaire administered to 402 adult respondents in Azerbaijan and analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling. The results indicate that perceived health taxation is positively associated with sustainable public welfare but negatively associated with respondents’ self-reported healthy consumption behavior. In contrast, healthy consumption behavior is positively associated with sustainable public welfare. Furthermore, chronic disease in the family negatively moderates the relationship between perceived health taxation and sustainable public welfare, whereas trust in public health policy and generation positively moderate the proposed relationships. The study contributes to the health taxation literature by providing evidence from a pre-implementation policy context. These findings offer practical implications for designing socially acceptable and effective preventive fiscal policies.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080222

Authors: International Journal of Financial Studies Editorial Office International Journal of Financial Studies Editorial Office

Starting with Issue 9 of International Journal of Financial Studies (Volume 14, 2026), the International Journal of Financial Studies (ISSN 2227-7072) will adopt the abbreviation Int [...]

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080223

Authors: Algirdas Justinas Staugaitis Česlovas Christauskas

This study examines both the linear and nonlinear relationship between overall Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance and firm market value, while also comparing the effects of the Environmental, Social, and Governance dimensions in publicly listed companies from the European Union. The analysis is based on an unbalanced panel of 1706 non-financial listed firms covering the period 2011–2025. Firm value is primarily measured by Tobin’s Q, with the Price-to-Book ratio and Return on Assets (ROA) used for robustness analysis. The results indicate a significant U-shaped relationship between overall ESG performance and firm value, suggesting that the value-enhancing effects of ESG emerge only after firms achieve sufficiently high sustainability performance. In contrast, the individual Environmental, Social, and Governance dimensions in most cases do not exhibit significantly different effects on firm market value. Additional subsample analyses reveal that the nonlinear relationship is more pronounced among Western European firms and companies with lower greenhouse gas emissions intensity. The findings suggest that investors primarily evaluate firms based on their overall sustainability profile rather than individual ESG dimensions. The study contributes to the ESG literature by providing further evidence of the nonlinear nature of the ESG–firm value relationship and by comparing the explanatory power of aggregated and disaggregated ESG measures within the European Union’s harmonized sustainability reporting environment.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080220

Authors: Belal Ali Ghaleb

This study examines the relationship between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and investment efficiency and investigates whether board gender diversity moderates this relationship among Saudi listed firms. Using a sample of non-financial companies listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) with available ESG scores over the period 2015–2023, the study employs panel regression analysis to assess the impact of ESG performance on investment efficiency. The findings indicate that higher ESG performance is associated with a greater tendency toward overinvestment rather than improved investment efficiency. However, board gender diversity significantly weakens this relationship, indicating a moderating effect of female board representation. The results remain robust across alternative specifications. This study advances to the ESG and corporate governance literature by providing empirical evidence from Saudi Arabia, an emerging market undergoing significant institutional reforms under Vision 2030 and highlights the importance of board gender diversity in improving the effectiveness of firms’ sustainability strategies.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080221

Authors: Ya Li Yihang Sun Zhen Zhang Hua Feng

Drawing on panel data from firms listed on the SME Board and Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) between 2010 and 2024, this study examines how patient capital influences SME innovation. It considers both the quantity and quality of innovation and investigates the underlying mechanisms. Using the China Industrial Enterprises Database (2000–2014), it further explores the innovation effects of patient capital on unlisted SMEs. The empirical findings are as follows. First, patient capital, measured by the proportion of relationship-based debt and stable equity, exhibits a significant and robust positive association with the output and quality of SME innovation, and this association gradually strengthens over time. Second, heterogeneity analyses show that relationship-based debt is more strongly associated with innovation in state-owned enterprises and national-level “Little Giant” firms (specialized, refined, distinctive, innovative SMEs), whereas stable equity is significantly associated with innovation only in private and ordinary enterprises. The association between stable equity and innovation is more pronounced in non-regulated industries, while the association for relationship-based debt remains consistent across industries. Third, mechanism tests reveal that patient capital is linked to SME innovation through four channels: alleviating financing constraints, fostering university–industry–research collaboration, improving knowledge conversion efficiency, and strengthening market power. Fourth, an extended analysis confirms that patient capital is also significantly associated with innovation among unlisted SMEs, indicating strong external validity of the study’s conclusions. Based on these findings, this paper advocates for establishing a long-term financing mechanism oriented toward patient capital, with differentiated allocation and optimization of institutional environments across industries. Such an approach should facilitate three transmission channels—university–industry–research collaboration, knowledge transfer, and market power—while extending policy coverage to unlisted SMEs, thereby nurturing a virtuous cycle ecosystem of “long-term capital → sustained R&D → high-quality innovation.”

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080219

Authors: Haifa Talbi Meriem Youssef Christian de Peretti Lotfi Belkacem

The opportunities in green investment have propelled the green bond market at a time when climate change has emerged as a critical issue. As more investors express a preference for environmentally responsible investments, the popularity of green bonds remains high. Such considerations motivate the exploration of the relationship between these instruments and different assets to better appreciate their potential benefits. This paper examines the relationship between green bonds and various financial markets, including conventional bonds, equities, oil, and clean energy stocks, using daily return data from July 2014 to October 2024. Hence, the cross-quantilogram approach is employed to explore how Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) and Financial Market Uncertainty (VIX) influence these dependence structures. The empirical results suggest a strong correlation between green bonds and conventional bonds. Moreover, green bonds can serve as a diversification tool for investors in stock, oil, and clean energy markets. The uncertainty measures do not provide any information that could affect the dependence structures among these markets.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080218

Authors: Minh Vo

This study examines whether modern deep learning architectures can improve multi-horizon value-at-risk (VaR) forecasting by learning nonlinear tail-risk dynamics that are difficult to capture with conventional econometric models. Using S&P 500 return data and realized volatility measures, we compare quantile regression (QR), Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LGBM), and five neural architectures—MLP, LSTM, TCN, TiDE, and TFT—within HAR, CAViaR, and realized-volatility-augmented CAViaR specifications across 1% and 5% VaR at 1-day, 5-day, 10-day, and 22-day horizons. Forecast performance is evaluated using pinball loss, formal VaR backtests, and the model confidence set procedure. The results suggest that the performance of deep neural architectures depends on the forecast horizon and the structure of the underlying tail-risk dynamics. In particular, gated memory, attention-based learning, and multi-horizon sequence design appear to improve conditional quantile forecasting by better capturing persistence, nonlinear dependence, and regime-sensitive behavior. At the same time, stronger statistical forecasting accuracy does not automatically imply regulatory validity, since a VaR model must also satisfy formal coverage and independence tests. Overall, the findings highlight the distinction between predictive skill and regulatory adequacy in financial risk measurement.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080217

Authors: Lumengo Bonga-Bonga

Grounded in the theoretical frameworks of safe haven and hedging asset theory, alongside wavelet-based time-frequency analysis, this study investigates the dynamic interconnectedness between three major cryptocurrencies and six global stock markets spanning both developed and emerging economies. Unlike prior wavelet studies that rely predominantly on graphical interpretation, this paper advances the literature by complementing graphical outputs with numerical results, offering a more rigorous and reproducible analytical foundation. Using daily price data from January 2018 to October 2024, the study applies both univariate and multivariate wavelet techniques to capture return co-movements across multiple time horizons. The univariate analysis reveals significant variance in stock returns concentrated at high frequencies, particularly over 2–4-day cycles, with pronounced fluctuations during the COVID-19 pandemic. In emerging markets such as Nigeria, additional volatility is attributed to political instability and macroeconomic crises. The multivariate analysis further demonstrates that observed co-movements between cryptocurrencies and stock markets are largely driven by interdependence rather than contagion. The paper’s findings are relevant to portfolio diversification strategies across both developed and emerging markets for investors combining stock and cryptocurrency assets.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080216

Authors: Sónia Monteiro Vanda Roque Inês Moreira

This study examines the relationship between financial performance, ESG reporting, and corporate value. The study uses content analysis of non-financial reports of Portuguese listed corporations from 2019 to 2022 to construct a comprehensive ESG disclosure index, based on GRI standards, as well as the respective environmental, social, and governance sub-indices. Panel regression models are used to investigate whether financial performance increases ESG reporting and whether ESG reporting enhances corporate value, while controlling for firm size, sector, and reputation. The results show that financial performance has no significant impact on ESG reporting. Only firm size seems to positively and significantly impact ESG reporting. This finding supports the prior literature linking larger and more visible firms to higher ESG disclosure levels. Furthermore, the results show that ESG reporting does not significantly impacts corporate value. Instead, corporate value is negatively and significantly affected by firm size. This result suggests that larger and more mature firms may derive comparatively fewer valuation benefits from ESG reporting, in line with recent evidence. Overall, the results suggest that structural firm characteristics (notably firm size) play a more decisive role in shaping ESG reporting and corporate value.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080215

Authors: Li Sun Nian Jiang Aojun Wang

Effective transmission of monetary policy serves as the foundational institutional guarantee for sustaining macroeconomic stability, smoothing cyclical economic fluctuations, and promoting high-quality development. Nevertheless, the underlying determinants driving the time-varying effectiveness of China’s quantity-based monetary policy have not been systematically and empirically delineated in the prevailing literature. This paper first constructs a precise measurement indicator for the effectiveness of China’s quantity-based monetary policy from the output-transmission dimension, which is defined as the response of domestic real output (excluding the contribution of net exports) to orthogonalized exogenous M2 growth shocks. On this basis, the gradient-boosting decision tree (GBDT) model is integrated with the Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) framework to quantitatively identify the core determinants that govern the policy effectiveness across different economic cycles and structural transformation stages. The estimation results document clear stage-wise heterogeneity in the drivers of China’s quantity-based monetary policy effectiveness: population-aging and macroeconomic-policy indicators stand out as the dominant explanatory factors over 2002–2008, while economic-structure indicators assume the leading role in shaping policy effectiveness during 2009–2015. The 2016–2022 period is further characterized by the joint dominance of demographic aging and economic-structure dimensions. Within this latest phase, the old-age dependency ratio, real–virtual economy structural misalignment, and distorted aggregate supply configuration exert statistically significant negative marginal contributions to the model-predicted effectiveness of monetary policy, whereas the total fertility rate and potential output growth rate yield positive and economically meaningful contributions.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080214

Authors: Changrong Lu Lian Liu Jiaxiang Li Fandi Yu

This study investigates whether holder-side RMB-related exposure is systematically associated with macroeconomic performance efficiency. Using a multi-objective efficiency framework rather than single macroeconomic indicators, we construct economy-year efficiency scores for 25 economies over 2005–2018 based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) and cross-efficiency evaluation. We then examine how these scores vary with RMB-related exchange-rate exposure and China-related value-added linkage proxies, while distinguishing RMB-specific exposure from broader trade integration and structural conditions. The results suggest conditional associations between holder-side RMB-related exposure and macroeconomic performance efficiency. The exchange-rate channel is positive and statistically significant under the baseline DEA specification (p < 0.01) when using PCSE. The estimated magnitude is economically modest and sensitive to alternative ICT proxies, efficiency benchmarks, and lag structures. By contrast, the GVC channel provides suggestive rather than confirmatory evidence, as China-related value-added linkages are not robustly significant under the revised fixed-effects specifications, augmented controls, or two-way fixed effects. The positive ERPT association is consistent in sign across the pooled CCR and genuine Game Cross-efficiency benchmarks. The VRS/BCC results are used as a complementary first-stage sensitivity check on the returns-to-scale assumption. The magnitude and statistical inference remain sensitive to alternative specifications and variance estimators. Overall, the findings should be interpreted as reduced-form, mechanism-consistent associations rather than causal effects of RMB internationalization.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080213

Authors: Ulaş Ünlü Ayhan Kuloğlu Özkan Çıtak İhsan Yapar Yasin Eryılmaz

This study examines the relationship between green financial development, green innovation, and resource productivity in 27 European Union member states over the period 2000–2020. To capture green financial development more comprehensively, the study develops a composite indicator combining financial development and environmental taxation. The empirical analysis employs two-way fixed-effects estimations, bootstrap mediation analysis, lagged fixed-effects models, decomposition robustness tests, and dynamic System GMM estimations to investigate both the direct and indirect channels linking green finance to circular economy performance. The results show that green financial development consistently promotes green innovation across the baseline and robustness specifications. However, the bootstrap mediation analysis does not provide statistically robust evidence that green innovation mediates the relationship between green financial development and resource productivity within the static framework. The dynamic System GMM estimations provide additional evidence by indicating a positive association between green innovation and resource productivity once persistence in the dependent variable is taken into account. These findings suggest that the relationship among green financial development, green innovation, and resource productivity is sensitive to the econometric framework employed and is better characterized as a dynamic adjustment process rather than an immediate contemporaneous transmission mechanism. Heterogeneity analysis further reveals that these relationships are primarily evident among Western EU member states, whereas comparable associations are not statistically supported in the Eastern EU subsample, highlighting the importance of differentiated policy approaches across the European Union. This study contributes to the literature in four main ways. First, it proposes a composite Green Financial Development indicator. Second, it evaluates Resource Productivity as an indicator of circular economy performance. Third, it demonstrates that static and dynamic panel approaches provide complementary evidence on the green finance–innovation–productivity nexus. Fourth, it reveals substantial regional heterogeneity within the European Union by showing that the estimated relationships are statistically significant in the Western EU subsample but not in the Eastern EU subsample, underscoring the importance of differentiated regional policy approaches. The findings offer important implications for policymakers seeking to accelerate the transition toward a more resource-efficient and sustainable European economy.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080212

Authors: Ahlam El Ferrad Aya Klaffa Mohamed Oudgou Abdeslam Boudhar

Conducted in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines, this systematic bibliometric review provides a structured examination of the literature on the link between digitalization, artificial intelligence (AI), and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure, focusing on the ways in which digitalization and artificial intelligence are likely to influence the disclosure of ESG of companies. The study employs a corpus drawn from the Scopus database. An observation of the interactions among several bibliometric indicators, depicted in statistical and graphical formats, illustrates the geographical distribution of publications, the influence of scientific journals, the evolution of keyword trends, and the organization of the field. The analysis indicates an estimated 56% annual growth in scientific output, along with a pronounced concentration of research activity in China. By contrast, regions such as Africa are underrepresented. Furthermore, the results highlight an overall positive and significant relationship between digitalization, artificial intelligence, and ESG disclosure. More specifically, the reviewed literature emphasizes the role of several explanatory factors, notably improved informational quality, transparency, and reduced information asymmetry, as well as the mediating effect of dynamic capabilities and innovation capabilities. This research offers an up-to-date and structured synthesis of the main determinants of the link between digitalization, artificial intelligence and ESG disclosure. In addition, it enriches the growing body of literature on the relationship between digitalization and sustainability. Specifically, it shows that digitalization can be a strategic tool for enhancing Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosure.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080211

Authors: Mitja Godec Leo Mršić

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations have become an increasingly important component of sustainable finance, investment decision-making, and banking regulation. As financial institutions face growing pressure to integrate sustainability objectives into their business models, understanding how sustainability performance relates to market valuation has become an important issue for investors, regulators, and bank management. Despite the growing ESG literature, evidence regarding the valuation relevance of individual ESG dimensions remains limited, particularly in the European banking sector. This study examines whether ESG dimensions are uniformly associated with the market valuation of European banks or whether financial markets differentiate among individual ESG pillars. Using a panel dataset of European banks covering 2021–2024 and Bloomberg ESG indicators, the study estimates panel econometric models to evaluate the associations between disaggregated ESG pillars and market-based valuation measures. The empirical findings reveal substantial heterogeneity across ESG dimensions. The social pillar is positively associated with market valuation, whereas the environmental pillar is negatively associated, while governance exhibits weak or statistically insignificant associations. The findings remain robust across several alternative model specifications. The results indicate that investors in highly regulated European banking markets differentiate between ESG dimensions, suggesting that financial markets differentiate among ESG dimensions and that analysing ESG at the pillar level provides a more nuanced understanding of market valuation than aggregate ESG measures.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080210

Authors: Nikhil Bhardwaj Ivana Miklošević Eshan Gambhir

The present study examined the dynamics of equity-market integration among India and five major global economies: China, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Daily data were analysed for the period from January 2002 to December 2025. This study employs Johansen co-integration and the Granger causality test, along with a DCC-GARCH model and the Diebold–Yilmaz connectedness approach, to estimate time-varying conditional correlations across crisis regimes. The findings reveal a single long-run co-integrating relationship in the pre-COVID-19 period (2002–2019) that weakens to none when the post-COVID-19 period (2020–2025) is investigated in isolation, suggesting that the intense early-pandemic coupling became moderated as monetary-policy cycles diverged. The Granger causality test showed that the United States consistently and unidirectionally drives the Indian market, while India’s pre-crisis role as a transmitter to Asian markets fades after the pandemic. The DCC-GARCH indicated that India’s conditional correlations with selected economies rose sharply during the 2008 and 2020 crises, peaking with Hong Kong SAR (0.64). The DY connectedness framework reinforced this pattern. Systemwide connectedness rose sharply during both crises, exceeding 57%, compared to roughly 45% in calmer phases. The United States emerged as the key net transmitter of shocks, and India acted as a net receiver.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080209

Authors: Mukhtaruddin Mukhtaruddin Umi Kalsum Rika Henda Safitri Putri Meilanda

Purpose: This study aims to examine the effects of intellectual capital (IC), environmental, social, and governance (ESG), and competitive advantage (CA) on firm value (FV), with board gender diversity (BGD) as a moderating variable. Methodology/Design/Approach: The population comprises companies in the Asian region from 2015 to 2023. Companies were based on specific criteria, resulting in 637 companies with 5733 observations. The study used multiple regressions and moderated multiple regressions in data analysis. Finding/Result: The findings indicate that IC has a negative and significant effect on FV. ESG performance has a positive and insignificant effect on FV, while CA has a positive and significant effect on FV. BGD moderates the relationship between IC, ESG, and CA on FV. It strengthens the effect of CA on FV and weakens the relationship between IC and ESG on FV. Practical Implications: Companies must pay attention to IC, CA and BGD, these variables influence investor’s reactions in determining investments. The government should monitor ESG-related corporate activities to ensure alignment with sustainable business strategies. Institutions related to sustainability issues develop standardized ESG disclosure. Originality/Value: The results contribute to signaling theory and resource-based theory. Limited prior research utilizes BGD as a moderating variable, highlighting the novelty of this study.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080208

Authors: Lerato Mothibi Teboho Charles Mashao Bertha Chipo Bangara

Studies on the implications of digital financial development and their impact on monetary policy effectiveness have shown mixed results, with some evidence of interdependence and potential transmission challenges. While some studies highlight positive growth impacts moderated by institutions with risks to policy sovereignty from innovations, research on South Africa remains minimal, despite having a mature financial system and rapid uptake of digital finance. The study used an ARDL model with the digital financial development index, inflation, interest rate, financial deepening, and an interaction of the digital financial development index and interest rate to analyse the implications of digital finance and its impact on monetary policy effectiveness in South Africa. Utilising annual data from 1990 to 2024, the results showed that the digital financial development index positively influences inflation in the long run. In addition, interest rates have a significant negative impact on inflation in the long run, while financial deepening, exchange rate and GDP per capita are insignificant in the long run. Furthermore, interest rate interactions with the digital financial development index exert downward inflationary pressure, but the interaction term is statistically significant in the long run. Therefore, digital financial development mitigates the inflationary effect of interest rates and appear to strengthen the monetary policy effectiveness in controlling inflation in the long run. We recommend that policymakers consider incorporating digital financial development indicators into the model for determining interest rates when developing a strategy to control inflation, thereby enhancing monetary policy effectiveness.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080207

Authors: Yassine Ech-chatty Azzouz Elhamma

This study conducts a bibliometric analysis of green finance research from 2000 to 2025 using Scopus data and VOSviewer (version 1.6.21) and Bibliometrix® (version 5.4.1). It analyzes publication trends, geographic distribution, collaboration patterns, and thematic evolution. A clear inflection appears around 2015, aligned with the Paris Agreement, followed by rapid growth in output. Keyword mapping identifies core themes, including green finance, sustainable finance, green bonds, climate finance, and climate change. Citation and co-citation networks reveal an increasingly coherent knowledge structure, signaling rising intellectual maturity. The findings inform future research agendas and support evidence-based policy design for green finance development across markets and institutions globally.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080206

Authors: Said Mabrouk Ahlam Qafas

This article aims to analyze the determining factors behind the persistence of barriers to financial inclusion in Morocco. It also seeks to highlight the relationship between several economic, social, cultural, regulatory and institutional constraints on the access and use of financial services by underserved populations. Thus, our methodology is exclusively quantitative and relies on a survey conducted through a questionnaire targeting a sample of 562 individuals from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. The collected data were analyzed using the partial least squares method (SmartPLS). The study reveals the importance of improving financial education, digital infrastructure, and regulatory flexibility to overcome financial exclusion. It also underscores the need to strengthen trust in financial institutions, adapt financial products to user needs, and implement inclusive public policies that promote financial empowerment for all segments of the population.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080205

Authors: Julián Benavides Franco Jaime Andrés Carabali Luis Ángel Meneses Cerón Alex Pérez Yudith Cristina Caicedo

This paper studies the impact of weather shocks on the credit risk of bank portfolios in small and rural municipalities in Colombia, which are highly vulnerable to these climate variations. It addresses the relationship between extreme temperature and precipitation events and the increase in the proportion of loans at risk, using data from 2011 to 2023. Extreme climate shocks negatively affect loan portfolio quality in Colombian rural municipalities, especially in microcredits. Credit risk decreases in municipalities with higher per capita incomes. It varies according to the type of loan and the nature of the weather shock. The results show that low temperature shocks increase risk in commercial and consumer loans. In contrast, low-precipitation shocks increase risk in microcredit. The increasing importance of climatic disturbances stresses the need for banks to develop their own models to manage these risks and to deepen analysis that incorporate borrower-specific information and banking policies to protect both financial institutions and borrowers from the impacts of climate change. The integration of sustainable practices and climate education can be key to improving financial resilience in these vulnerable areas.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080204

Authors: Fernando SanJuan-Paz Ricardo Cristhian Morales Pelagio Arturo Briseño-García Miguel Reyna-Castillo Jorge-Alberto Pérez-Cruz

Capital structure theory has historically been dominated by the objective of maximizing firm value through the optimal combination of debt and equity. However, contemporary environments characterized by systemic uncertainty, financial volatility, and elevated risk exposure have highlighted the limitations of an exclusively value-oriented perspective. In response, this study adopts a theory-building approach and develops a conceptual framework grounded in corporate financial resilience through an integrative theoretical review. Drawing on a critical examination of the principal theories of capital structure, including Modigliani and Miller’s propositions, trade-off theory, pecking order theory, agency theory, signaling theory, and market timing theory, the study argues that long-term financial sustainability depends not only on value maximization but also on the organizational capacity to absorb shocks, preserve liquidity, maintain solvency, and reduce vulnerability to financial distress. As its primary theoretical contribution, the study extends the explanatory domain of capital structure theory by formalizing a resilience-oriented framework that integrates key constructs, conceptual relationships, and theoretical propositions linking leverage, liquidity, solvency, financial flexibility, and financial resilience. Within this framework, moderate leverage, financial flexibility, and operational stability emerge as central mechanisms for strengthening corporate continuity under conditions of systemic uncertainty.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080203

Authors: Hsu-Chi Weng Cecilia Hermansson

This paper examines how behavioral intention, combined with risk tolerance, financial confidence, and self-control, relates to consumer credit usage. Inspired by the theory of planned behavior, which suggests that behavioral intention is the direct precursor to actual behavior, our study investigates how these financial personality traits moderate the relationship between intention and the uptake of consumer credit. Using a combination of survey and bank register data, we focus on the amount of outstanding balance on consumer credit as the objective measure of consumer credit behavior. The results show that higher risk tolerance and greater financial confidence both are associated with increased credit use among those with the intention to borrow, while self-control mitigates this relationship. We observe that gender differences in financial behavior are notable: men who report high confidence and an intention to use consumer credit tend to carry higher outstanding balance, whereas higher self-control in men is linked to lower credit use. Additionally, although strong behavioral intention and higher income both predict greater consumer credit use, self-control mitigates this association among high-income individuals. Our study adds to consumer credit research by revealing the complex interplay between behavioral intention, risk tolerance, financial confidence, and self-control in relation to actual consumer credit usage.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080202

Authors: Qian Wang Siyu Chen

Drawing on a panel of Chinese A-share listed firms covering 2007 to 2024, we construct a firm-level measure of climate risk exposure based on textual analysis of annual reports. Employing a three-way fixed effects model combined with endogeneity corrections and a battery of robustness checks, we empirically identify the causal effect of climate risk on the cost of debt, as well as its underlying transmission mechanisms and heterogeneous boundary conditions. Our analysis yields three core findings. First, climate risk exerts a statistically significant and economically meaningful positive effect on the cost of debt, indicating that greater climate risk exposure amplifies firms’ debt financing burdens. Second, the impact operates through two parallel transmission channels. On the one hand, climate risk erodes corporate financial fundamentals by disrupting production and operations and elevating default risk. On the other hand, it damages non-financial reputation by triggering downgrades in Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings and weakening long-term financing credibility. Third, the relationship between climate risk and the cost of debt is significantly moderated by firm- and industry-level characteristics: high-quality information disclosure attenuates the adverse financing impact of climate risk, while affiliation with heavily polluting industries strengthens this positive association. These findings remain robust to alternative measures of climate risk and the cost of debt, alternative clustering specifications, high-dimensional interactive fixed effects, and subsample tests with restricted sample windows. To address endogeneity concerns stemming from reverse causality and omitted variable bias, we adopt two complementary identification strategies: using one-period lagged values of the core explanatory variable and conducting instrumental variable estimation via two-stage least squares (2SLS). Estimates from both approaches remain statistically and economically consistent with our baseline results. Further heterogeneity analyses show that the cost-increasing effect of climate risk is more pronounced for firms without ESG fund ownership, non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs), and firms located in non-eastern regions of China. Overall, this study provides novel firm-level evidence on the microeconomic consequences of climate risk in emerging economies, develops a dual transmission framework integrating financial fundamentals and non-financial reputation, and offers actionable implications for policymakers, financial institutions, and firms to improve climate risk governance and optimize the financing environment amid the low-carbon transition.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080201

Authors: Helal Uddin Munim Kumar Barai

Financial technology (fintech) provides access to financial services without relying on physical branch infrastructure, thereby overcoming geographical barriers and reducing transaction costs for users, including those previously excluded. Evidence from global financial databases suggests that fintech has played a significant role in bringing unbanked adults into the formal financial system, although its impact on bank-level financial inclusion and performance remains empirically contested, particularly across economies at different stages of development. This study advances understanding of the impact of fintech adoption on financial inclusion and bank performance across 14 Asian countries, divided into four subgroups. Using bank-level panel data from Bloomberg for 173 banks over the period 2016–2024 and employing Driscoll–Kraay fixed-effects estimation, the study finds that, regardless of a nation’s level of development, fintech adoption significantly and generally consistently advances financial inclusion across Asian banking systems. They also show that the impacts of fintech on profitability are not ubiquitous nor instantaneous, and that in more technologically sophisticated economies, these effects may initially be detrimental before any longer-term performance advantages are materialize.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080200

Authors: Thabelo Sean-Vincent Mofokeng Chioma Sylvia Okoro

We examine whether board activity (B_ACTIV), board size (B_SIZE), board independence (BIND), and board tenure (BOARD_TEN) are associated with the performance of South African real estate investment trusts (REITs) over the period 2013 to 2025. The REIT framework provides a rigorous setting to evaluate corporate governance theory, as statutory distribution mandates constrain payout discretion and contracted-income business models limit managerial opportunism, suggesting that governance effects concentrate within specific performance channels. We estimate dynamic panel models using a two-step system GMM framework with collapsed instruments, year fixed effects, Windmeijer-corrected standard errors, and firm-level controls for firm size (SIZE), leverage (LEV), and asset growth (GROWTH) to address endogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity, and performance persistence. We evaluate robustness through an endogenous-regressor specification, a bootstrap bias-corrected LSDVC estimator, and outlier-adjusted estimations. The sample comprises 30 JSE-listed REITs. We evaluate performance across funds from operations per share (FFO_PS), dividend yield (DIV_YIELD), return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), return on invested capital (ROIC), and earnings per share (EPS). Our findings reveal that B_SIZE exhibits a statistically significant negative association with accounting profitability, where each additional director corresponds to a 1.0 percentage point reduction in ROE and a 0.32 percentage point reduction in ROA. The ROE effect remains robust across every identification strategy, including specifications treating board composition as endogenous and estimations winsorizing the dependent variables. Because firm SIZE remains statistically insignificant while LEV and GROWTH display their expected theoretical signs, the B_SIZE effect is isolated from firm scale. BIND demonstrates a directionally positive but specification-sensitive association with returns and payouts, whereas BOARD_TEN shows no robust association with any performance metric, and B_ACTIV effects attenuate once endogeneity is addressed. Overall, governance effects concentrate in operating efficiency and payout measures while remaining absent from per-share metrics, reflecting the precise channels through which boards exercise authority. Our findings caution against board expansion in this sector, highlight board scale as a transparent governance screen for investors, and demonstrate that meeting frequency and tenure benchmarks offer no reliable performance signal.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080199

Authors: Guofeng Luo Jiaze Liu

Against the backdrop of escalating financial regulation in China, this study examines how regulatory enforcement intensity affects corporate liquidity risk among A-share listed non-financial firms over 2015–2024. We construct a composite regional regulatory intensity index (Enforce) integrating the frequency and monetary magnitude of administrative penalties issued by local securities regulators and employ firm- and year-fixed-effects panel regressions with the current ratio (CR) as the primary liquidity measure. We find that tighter regulatory enforcement significantly depresses the current ratio, consistent with a compliance-cost channel that constrains short-term debt-servicing capacity. Mediation analysis—conducted separately for each ESG sub-dimension and verified via bootstrap tests—reveals that the corporate governance dimension (G) generates a significant positive indirect effect (consistent partial mediation), the social responsibility dimension (S) generates a significant negative indirect effect (competing partial mediation), and the environmental dimension (E) yields no statistically significant indirect effect. Ownership-type heterogeneity tests confirm that non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) are substantially more sensitive to regulatory tightening than state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Moderation analysis further shows that financial leverage plays a non-monotonic role: the regulation–liquidity effect is negative at low leverage levels and reverses to positive above an estimated threshold (Lev ≈ 0.56). Robustness is established through subsample regressions and a lagged-variable endogeneity test. These findings enrich the institutional finance literature and provide evidence-based guidance for differentiated regulatory policymaking.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080198

Authors: Guanfen Hua Jinliang Wang Xuesheng Chen Zhenying Zuo

Recent disruptions have made supply chain resilience a central concern for firms and policymakers, yet the financial-policy foundations of resilience remain insufficiently understood. This study examines whether policy-driven industry–finance cooperation strengthens corporate supply chain resilience and through which financial channels this effect operates. Using the China Industry–Finance Cooperation (IFC) Pilot Policy as an exogenous policy shock, we analyze Chinese A-share listed manufacturing firms from 2014 to 2023. The SDID estimates show that the IFC Pilot Policy increases firms’ supply chain resilience by 0.061 standard deviations, and this result remains stable across multiple robustness checks. Mechanism tests indicate that the policy improves resilience by reducing debt financing costs, promoting supply chain finance, and enhancing real investment efficiency. Further heterogeneity analysis shows that the effect is stronger among technology-intensive firms and firms located in less favorable business environments. Theoretically, this study links industry–finance cooperation to supply chain resilience through a “funding cost–chain cash flow–capital use” framework. Practically, it shows that better coordination between financial services and industrial needs can help firms strengthen their capacity to withstand supply chain risks.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080197

Authors: Sugeng Suroso Sri Wulandari Chajar Matari Fath Mala

This paper examines whether prolonged sanctions and major geopolitical episodes associated with financial fragmentation alter exchange-rate dynamics and weaken the explanatory power of domestic macroeconomic channels and strengthen external financial dominance of traditional exchange-rate transmission mechanisms. Standard exchange rate theories are based on the concepts of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and Uncovered Interest Parity (UIP). However, the application of continuous sanctions could weaken this explanatory power and change exchange rate dynamics. The present study applies a combined framework of Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL), Error Correction Modeling (ECM), Vector Autoregression (VAR) and structural break analysis to study the exchange-rate behavior in response to repeated geopolitical shocks using monthly data for Russia from 2005 to 2025. The results indicate that external variables such as the US dollar index and oil prices are important determinants of exchange rates, while inflation and interest rate differentials associated with PPP and UIP have little explanatory power. Structural break tests detect major regime shifts associated with the Global Financial Crisis, Crimea-related sanctions episode, COVID-19 pandemic and Russia–Ukraine conflict. The error correction process indicates that the speed of adjustment to equilibrium is slow, which means that traditional exchange-rate relationships will continue to diverge. In general, the results suggest a regime-dependent exchange rate environment in which external financial factors tend to dominate domestic adjustment mechanisms. Our study contributes to the literature on exchange rates, sanctions and financial fragmentation by providing evidence on how geopolitical shocks shift the relative importance of domestic and external determinants in a highly sanctioned economy.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080196

Authors: Owen Ncube Godfrey Marozva

This study examines the moderating role of liquidity in the relationship between extreme capital structure and firm performance among listed firms in emerging markets. It is motivated by the need to better understand how financing constraints and liquidity management influence firm performance in environments characterised by high financial frictions and limited access to external capital. Extreme capital structure is defined as firms maintaining very low levels of debt, measured using thresholds of 1% (ultra-low debt) and 5% for both long-term debt and total debt. The analysis is based on a panel dataset of non-financial listed firms over the period 2006–2024 and employs a dynamic panel System Generalised Method of Moments (System GMM) complemented by a Random Effects model for robustness. Empirical results indicate that liquidity has a meaningful and predominantly positive moderating effect. This is observed when firms maintain extremely low long-term debt (1% threshold) and low long-term debt (5% threshold). Liquidity enhances firm performance. This effect is strongest for return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE). The effect on Tobin’s Q is weaker but remains generally positive. These findings highlight the strategic importance of liquidity in improving profitability and financial resilience under conservative financing structures. However, the findings are limited to listed non-financial firms in emerging markets and may not be generalizable to SMEs or unlisted firms. Future research could explore the threshold at which liquidity ceases to generate benefits or begins to produce diminishing returns in ultra-low leverage contexts.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14080195

Authors: Baoshuai Zhang Jinwei Zhang Jun Duan

Against the backdrop of rising geopolitical uncertainty, this paper uses daily data from 2013 to 2025 on the geopolitical risk index and China’s stock, bond, money, foreign exchange, commodity, gold, and real estate markets to construct a “quantile time-frequency connectedness–machine learning early warning” framework. It examines the state-dependent characteristics of risk spillovers between changes in geopolitical risk and China’s financial markets, as well as the ability to identify high-risk states. The results show that, first, financial market risk connectedness exhibits a pronounced tail amplification effect: the total connectedness index is 13.72% under normal conditions, but rises to 77.97% and 78.47% under extreme downside and extreme upside states, respectively. Second, risk connectedness is mainly concentrated in the short term, although long-term connectedness strengthens under extreme states. Third, the stock, real estate, and commodity markets generally act as net transmitters of risk, while the bond and foreign exchange markets generally act as net receivers. Fourth, machine learning models based on dynamic connectedness indicators can effectively identify future high-risk connectedness states. However, naïve benchmarks and ablation tests indicate that the total connectedness index and its distance from the rolling threshold are the main sources of information, while the contribution of machine learning models lies mainly in probability calibration, multi-horizon risk ranking, and the integration of auxiliary variables. The findings provide empirical evidence for cross-market risk monitoring and the construction of early warning indicators under geopolitical risk.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070194

Authors: Minh Nguyen Ngoc Cuong Nguyen Thanh Ngoc Nguyen Van

This study examines the mediating role of financial decisions and the moderating role of digital transformation in the relationship between managerial characteristics and financial performance among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam. Grounded in Upper Echelons Theory, Behavioral Theory of the Firm, Resource-Based View, and corporate finance theories, the study conceptualizes financial decisions as a formative higher-order construct comprising capital structure, investment, and working capital management decisions. The empirical analysis is based on survey data collected from 510 SMEs in Khanh Hoa Province, Vietnam. The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), including mediation and moderation tests. The results show that managerial characteristics have a significant positive effect on financial decisions, which in turn positively affect financial performance. Financial decisions are found to partially mediate the relationship between managerial characteristics and firm performance. In addition, digital transformation positively moderates the relationship between financial decisions and financial performance, indicating that firms with higher levels of digital capability derive greater performance benefits from their financial decisions. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of managerial attributes and digital transformation in shaping financial outcomes through effective financial decision-making in SMEs.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070193

Authors: Ting-Kun Liu

Sustainable finance, digital financial innovation, and green innovation have become central strategic pressures in banking, yet their joint effects on bank performance and risk remain insufficiently understood. This study develops an integrated ESG-innovation framework and examines quarterly panel data for 24 Taiwanese financial holding and domestic commercial banks from 2016Q1 to 2025Q3, yielding 934 bank-quarter observations. Return on assets (ROA) and the Z-score are used to capture operating performance and financial stability, respectively, and bank fixed-effects panel models are estimated for high- and low-ESG as well as high- and low-innovation subsamples. The re-estimated results reveal a conditional sustainability effect: ESG and innovation do not generate homogeneous financial benefits, but depend on banks’ ESG foundations, innovation intensity, leverage, and scale. Environmental scores are positively associated with ROA in the high-ESG subsample and weakly positive in the low-ESG subsample, whereas credit card transaction expansion is costly for low-ESG banks. In high-innovation banks, credit card transaction volume and green patents are negatively associated with ROA, suggesting adjustment costs and diminishing marginal returns. For financial stability, ESG recognition and green patents are more beneficial in lower ESG or innovation contexts, while leverage is consistently negative across all specifications. These findings contribute to the sustainable finance literature by clarifying how ESG, FinTech-related innovation, and green innovation jointly shape bank performance and risk in a policy-driven emerging market. The results also suggest that banks and regulators should adopt differentiated ESG and innovation strategies rather than assuming that sustainability investment produces uniform outcomes.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070192

Authors: János Kálmán András Lapsánszky

Digital finance is reshaping financial intermediation through platform-based credit, stablecoin-based payment and settlement arrangements, and a rapidly deepening reliance on critical third-party technology providers. Existing international frameworks identify many of these vulnerabilities, but macroprudential authorities still lack a traceable operational bridge from FinTech activities to systemic-risk channels, measurable indicators, stress-test assumptions and staged policy escalation. This article proposes the FinTech Macroprudential Integration Framework (FMIF) as an evidence-mapped operationalisation layer for existing macroprudential regimes. The FMIF does not claim to replace the frameworks issued by the FSB, BIS, IMF, BCBS, the EU or cyber-resilience authorities; instead, it translates their risk taxonomies and policy insights into a structured workflow linking activity perimeter, dependency registry, indicator formulas, modular stress tests and governance interfaces. The framework is developed for three activity clusters: platform credit and bank–FinTech partnerships; stablecoin-based payment and settlement; and critical third-party technology dependencies. These clusters are mapped to three channels: liquidity/run dynamics, interconnectedness and market spillovers, and operational concentration/correlated disruption. The article contributes by clarifying the research gap, disclosing the evidence-mapping procedure and source-level coding, classifying evidence quality, specifying indicator formulas and calibration principles, adding a stablecoin-run illustrative application, and discussing legal and institutional feasibility. The FMIF should be understood as a decision-support and decision-preparedness framework rather than as a fully validated decision-ready model. Empirical validation, jurisdiction-specific thresholds and legal triggers remain necessary next steps.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070191

Authors: Daniel Nigohosyan Albena Vutsova

This paper provides the first systematic, cross-country empirical comparison of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and Cohesion Policy funds (CPF) in the domain of renewable energy deployment. Covering 14 EU Member States, the analysis combines quantitative cross-country evidence on financing volumes, technology mixes, implementation speed, and reported capacity achievements. The findings show that the RRF represents a major amplification of EU renewable energy financing, with planned allocations exceeding Cohesion Policy expenditure by a factor of five to ten. At the same time, claims of superior performance-based delivery require qualification: green transition financial progress lags the general RRF disbursement rate, milestone fulfilment for renewable energy falls short of planned indicative rates in most countries, and reported operational capacity figures raise concerns about plausibility. The analysis reveals no meaningful correlation between milestone and target fulfilment and progress with renewable energy country-specific recommendations, suggesting that administrative compliance with milestones does not immediately translate into structural reform outcomes. These findings carry direct implications for the design of the post-2027 EU financial framework, particularly regarding the performance indicators, the introduction of attribution protocols for reform-linked achievements, and the preservation of complementarity between performance-based and non-performance-based approaches.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070190

Authors: Nassar Al-Hafidh Ahmed Lateef Salih Al-Karawi Hayder Albayati Erginbay Uğurlu

Digital financial inclusion (DFI) has become a central topic in financial inclusion research because digital payments, mobile money, internet banking, and platform-based finance can reduce access barriers and expand formal financial participation. Prior studies have documented the development relevance of financial inclusion and have constructed multidimensional financial inclusion and DFI indices, often using PCA and related composite-indicator methods. A remaining measurement gap concerns the equal observability of different digital-finance architectures within a common cross-country indicator set. This study addresses that gap by analyzing an existing PCA-based DFI score for 40 Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries over 2015–2024 through a channel-observability framework. The objective is to examine whether the observed DFI ranking is captured more directly through mobile-money indicators than through the available infrastructure-based representation of bank-led digital finance. The analysis decomposes the six available indicators into a bank-led visibility proxy, based on internet penetration and ATM density, and a mobile-money visibility proxy, based on mobile agents, mobile accounts, mobile transaction volume, and transaction value relative to GDP. The OIC-wide mean DFI score increased from 11.31 in 2015 to 31.24 in 2024, while dispersion widened and the 2015 and 2024 top-ten country groups had zero overlap. The channel diagnostics show that the highest observed DFI scores are concentrated among countries whose digital-finance activity is directly recorded through mobile-money indicators, whereas several financially advanced economies are visible mainly through the bank-led infrastructure proxy. Zero-coded mobile-money observations are interpreted as indicator-visibility signals for the standalone mobile-money channel and considered separately from broader digital-finance activity. The Random Forest analysis functions as a bounded internal sensitivity audit of the existing six-indicator score and shows that mobile-money transaction variables carry the largest within-score explanatory weight. The theoretical contribution is to frame DFI measurement as an architecture-dependent observability problem rather than only as a weighting problem. The practical implication is that cross-country DFI rankings should be interpreted together with channel diagnostics, especially when bank-led digital services such as mobile banking, card payments, POS transactions, QR payments, and instant-payment systems are outside the balanced indicator set.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070189

Authors: Xiaofang Tan Ruirui Wei Rixin Li

Against the backdrop of rising corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) incidents in China’s capital market, this study examines how CSI affects short-window market reactions and through which investor-side mechanisms this effect operates. Using A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2017 to 2021, we construct a CSI index adapted to the Chinese institutional setting and employ an event-study framework combined with mediation and moderation models. The results show that CSI is associated with significantly more negative cumulative abnormal returns. Mechanism tests indicate that CSI is negatively associated with investor sentiment, and lower investor sentiment is associated with more negative market reactions, implying a negative indirect path through investor sentiment. Investor attention further conditions this relationship: when investor attention is higher, the negative market reaction to CSI is stronger, although the baseline interaction result should be interpreted cautiously because its significance is marginal. These conclusions are supported by Heckman two-step estimation, alternative sample construction, and alternative event-window tests. Additional analysis shows that prior CSR reputation can mitigate investor punishment after CSI events, suggesting an insurance effect.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070188

Authors: Francesco Cortellese Rubén Mora-Ruano Álvaro Salas-Suárez

This article provides a systematic literature review of recent research on money laundering in crypto-asset environments, focusing on the main operational challenges and technical solutions proposed. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, the review draws on searches in Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar, which identified 680 records and led, after screening and the application of inclusion and exclusion criteria, to a final sample of 58 academic studies published between 2020 and 2025. The review identifies four core challenges in blockchain-based anti-money laundering: pseudonymity, label scarcity and class imbalance, structural and computational complexity, and cross-blockchain data fragmentation. In response, the literature proposes several detection approaches, particularly feature-based and graph-based models, focusing on transactions, addresses, mixers and service providers. The findings show that, although these methods improve the detection of suspicious activity, important limitations remain regarding real-world identity attribution, reliable AML-specific ground-truth labels, scalability, operational validation and cross-chain flow reconstruction. The article contributes an analytical framework that links structural AML challenges with methodological responses, supporting clearer comparison of models and identifying priorities for future research. It also highlights the need for multidisciplinary collaboration across data science, finance, regulation, economics and forensic investigation.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070187

Authors: Jue Wang Mengjiao Gu

Accurate default risk prediction for agricultural loans is a prerequisite for balancing financial inclusion and safety in rural finance, yet traditional assessment methods have a limited capacity to capture exogenous variables such as climate risk. To this end, this paper constructs a credit risk prediction framework integrating multi-source remote sensing data with explainable machine learning to optimize the credit profile of agricultural loans. Controlling for conventional agricultural loan variables, a logistic regression model examines the statistical association between multi-source remote sensing features and farmers’ default risk. A comparative analysis of multiple machine learning models further demonstrates that incorporating remote sensing data helps improve prediction accuracy, with temperature and precipitation volatility emerging as the most important remote sensing predictors, capturing the predominant climate-related variations in default prediction. Analysis using the Explainable Boosting Machine (EBM) quantifies the contribution of these variables to default risk prediction and identifies notable interaction patterns between remote sensing indicators and traditional agricultural loan variables.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070186

Authors: Raad Mahmoud Al-Tal Ahmad M. Fawaier Mohammad Tayeh

Emerging economies face crucial challenges around fiscal stability, particularly servicing foreign debt and securing long-term financing arrangements. In this context, we investigated the relationship between the share of banking facilities allocated to various economic sectors, the growth of public revenues and the proportion of long-term loans relative to total foreign debt in Jordan. Using data from 2008: Q1 to 2022: Q4 and employing two regression models along with the Vector Error Correction model, key findings reveal that the share of banking facilities allocated to total financing positively impacts public income and reduces long-term liabilities (LRL). Additionally, the positive effect of direct credit from financial institutions on real GDP and public income is associated with a negative impact on LRL. Conversely, direct credit from financial corporations negatively influences real GDP and public income while positively affecting LRL. Direct credit from public sector financing exhibits an inverse relationship with economic growth and public income, leading to a positive association with LRL. The statistically significant error correction coefficients indicate that short-run deviations are corrected toward the long-run equilibrium, with the first model showing a faster but oscillatory adjustment process and the second model exhibiting a slower and more gradual return to equilibrium. These findings suggest that developing countries like Jordan must prioritize banking facilitation for sectors such as industry, tourism, and agriculture to facilitate debt repayment.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070185

Authors: Colin Ellis

This paper examines the relationship between Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) communication surprises, global risk sentiment, and net portfolio debt inflows to twelve major emerging market economies over the period 2000–2024. Exploiting a high-frequency U.S. Monetary Policy Event-Study Database, we estimate panel fixed-effects regressions and local projections at quarterly frequency. We find that global risk sentiment, proxied by the VIX, is a robust and persistent driver of emerging market capital flows, while Fed communication surprises are statistically insignificant in normal times and in the 2022–2024 tightening cycle. A striking exception is the 2013 taper tantrum—the episode of severe capital outflow pressure triggered by Chairman Bernanke’s May 2013 congressional testimony signalling a possible tapering of asset purchases. Regime interaction tests reveal a large, highly significant negative effect of communication surprises on flows during this episode alone, with no comparable effect in 2022. Local projections confirm that the taper tantrum generated a sharp initial outflow followed by partial reversal, while VIX effects are contemporaneous but not persistent. We empirically test for market learning, finding that reduced sensitivity to Fed communication reflects a discrete recalibration after the 2013 shock rather than a gradual learning process. Regarding capital flows, the taper tantrum is clearly the exception, not the rule.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070183

Authors: Arie Pratama Winwin Yadiati Edi Jaenudin Mohamad Ezrien Mohamad Kamal

This study examines the association among board diversity, diversity policies, diversity performance, and firm value in ASEAN-5 listed companies: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines. Board diversity is measured through gender diversity, national diversity, board-specific skills, and board affiliation, while diversity policy captures disclosed opportunity and diversity policy, diversity targets, and board diversity policy. Diversity performance is proxied by Refinitiv’s Diversity and Inclusion Rating score, and firm value is measured by price-to-book value. Using 77 firms and 154 firm-year observations from 2022 to 2023, the study applies descriptive analysis, ANOVA, observed-variable SEM-path analysis, regression robustness checks, alternative PBV specifications, PROCESS bootstrapped mediation, and Bayesian path analysis. The results suggest that national diversity, board affiliation, and diversity policy are positively associated with diversity performance, while diversity performance is positively associated with firm value. Diversity policy and diversity performance provide the most stable evidence across specifications, whereas the board diversity results are more sensitive to the estimation approach. Bayesian results support the positive direction of the main paths, but indirect effects remain inconclusive. Overall, the findings provide cautious associational evidence that diversity-related governance may be reflected in market valuation through observable diversity performance, subject to the small sample, short period, and Refinitiv data coverage.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070184

Authors: Zulkifli Umar Muhammad Arfan Islahuddin Islahuddin Mulia Saputra

This study aims to examine the relationship between related party sales (RPS) and earnings management (EMN), as well as to investigate the moderating effects of institutional ownership (IO), single institutional ownership (SIO), and dispersed institutional ownership (DIO) on this relationship. This study examines non-service and non-financial firms listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange during the 2016–2024 period. The sample selection included firms with IO and RPS. The final sample consisted of 68 firms (585 firm-year observations) out of a total of 601 firms and was analyzed using moderated regression with unbalanced panel data. The findings indicate that RPS has a positive effect on EMN. IO weakens the positive effect of RPS on EMN. However, in the group consisting only of SIO, the positive effect of RPS on EMN becomes stronger. In contrast, in the DIO group, DIO is unable to moderate the relationship. Furthermore, EMN in firms engaging in RPS with parent firms does not differ from EMN in firms engaging in RPS with non-parent related parties. Finally, we conclude that, in the Indonesian context, RPS provides opportunities for management to engage in opportunistic behavior. The presence of SIO may increase earnings management, whereas DIO is unable to mitigate earnings management.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070182

Authors: Alejandro Pérez-y-Soto-Domínguez Juan Manuel Candelo-Viáfara Edwin Arango-Espinal

This paper examines whether standard price-discovery measures can reliably identify directional predictive precedence in a highly correlated commodity-equity system. Using 21 years of daily data for Petrobras and the Ibovespa (2005–2026), the study separates a measurement problem in forecast error variance decomposition from the reduced-form question of directional predictability in the conditional mean. The empirical strategy combines Monte Carlo simulation, generalized and Cholesky forecast error variance decompositions, full-sample and rolling-window Granger causality tests, a continuous Granger Leadership Index, Gaussian mixture regime classification, robustness checks, and out-of-sample forecasting validation. The results show that Cholesky-based FEVDs can be systematically misleading in high-correlation settings: at the observed contemporaneous correlation, generalized FEVD symmetry is mechanically induced by row normalization, while Cholesky attribution changes sharply under alternative orderings. By contrast, first-moment predictability reveals a directional asymmetry from Petrobras to the Ibovespa, interpreted as conditional-mean predictive precedence rather than structural informed trading or definitive price discovery. This asymmetry survives alternative lag structures, weekly aggregation, univariate GARCH filtering, within-dataset proxy controls, and a stylized equal-weight ex-Petrobras benchmark. Rolling evidence further identifies five persistent predictive regimes that alternate between firm-led, neutral, and macro-dominant states, indicating that firm-index predictive relations are regime dependent rather than static. Out-of-sample forecasting shows that the identified predictive precedence does not generate exploitable one-step-ahead gains (RMSE ratio = 1.002, OOS-R2 = −0.003, DM p = 0.451), thereby delimiting the economic scope of the findings. Overall, the results support a reduced-form interpretation of Petrobras–Ibovespa predictive dynamics and highlight the need to distinguish variance connectedness from conditional-mean predictive content when contemporaneous correlation is high.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070181

Authors: Elena Muñoz-Muñoz Carlos Díaz-Caro Eva Crespo-Cebada Ángel-Sabino Mirón Sanguino

Tourism recovery and hotel firm profitability do not necessarily move in lockstep. This paper examines the extent to which aggregate demand recovery is translated into firm-level financial performance, introducing the concept of a tourism-to-profitability conversion gap. The study combines bibliometric mapping of hotel performance research with a firm-level econometric analysis of an unbalanced panel of 4159 Spanish hotel firms classified under CNAE 5510 over 2015–2024, representing approximately 38,651 firm-year observations from SABI. Fixed-effects models are estimated using return on assets as the main dependent variable. The results show that leverage is consistently and negatively associated with profitability, and that this association became stronger during the COVID-19 period, as indicated by negative and significant leverage×COVID-19 interaction terms. Labour productivity is positively related to profitability, whereas labour cost intensity and fixed-asset intensity are negatively associated with returns when not matched by sufficient revenue generation. Median ROA fell from 3.7% pre-COVID-19 to −0.9% during the pandemic and recovered to 5.7% post-COVID-19 among surviving firms; however, the modest post-COVID-19 coefficient in the baseline model suggests that aggregate recovery indicators may conceal substantial heterogeneity in firm-level financial recovery. The paper reframes post-crisis hotel recovery as a firm-level financial transmission process: the conversion of renewed tourism demand into accounting profitability appears conditioned by balance-sheet vulnerability, labour productivity, cost structure, and asset rigidity, mechanisms that remain less central in the broader hotel performance literature.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070180

Authors: Yutong Wang Qi Zhang Yixuan Xie Xueying Meng Mahmood Ahmad

Every dollar directed toward green finance carries a promise, but does it deliver? This study tests whether corporate green bond issuance translates into measurable improvements in firm-level high-quality development, which is defined as the enhancement of firms’ sustainable growth capacity and resource allocation efficiency and is proxied by total factor productivity (TFP), a widely adopted indicator of development quality in the economics literature. Using panel data from Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed enterprises over 2014–2024, we employ a multi-period difference-in-differences framework, validated by parallel trend and placebo tests, to identify the causal effect of green bond issuance. Results confirm a significant positive impact, with green bond issuance raising firm TFP by 0.240 units, representing a substantial improvement in firms’ productivity performance relative to the sample average, robust across Olley–Pakes, Levinsohn–Petrin, and propensity score matched specifications. Mechanism analysis identifies three transmission channels: green technological innovation and green management practices operate as partial mediators, while financing constraints serve as a mediator. Heterogeneity tests reveal stronger effects among firms with higher agency costs, heavier pollution burdens, and those located in eastern China’s more marketized regions. By uncovering the productivity-enhancing mechanisms of green bond issuance, this study enriches the literature on sustainable finance and corporate high-quality development and provides new firm-level evidence on the economic consequences of green financial instruments. These findings provide micro-level evidence that green finance generates tangible productivity gains beyond signaling, offering actionable guidance for policymakers advancing sustainable corporate development under China’s dual carbon targets.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070179

Authors: Yasmine Snene Manzli Oana Panazan Ahmed Jeribi Catalin Gheorghe

This study compares gold-backed and conventional cryptocurrencies in terms of dependence structures and hedging effectiveness relative to precious metals. Daily data for gold, silver, cryptocurrencies, gold-backed cryptocurrencies, and USD-backed stablecoins from July 2020 to March 2026 are analyzed using a multivariate stochastic volatility framework with a grouped factor structure. Gold-backed cryptocurrencies move closely with gold and silver and provide meaningful hedging benefits. Conventional cryptocurrencies present weaker and less stable relationships with precious metals, reducing hedging potential. Important differences emerge between gold and silver, suggesting that precious metals should not be treated as a homogeneous asset class. Gold-backed cryptocurrencies appear much more closely aligned with precious metals than conventional cryptocurrencies. Additional analyses show that hedging effectiveness increases substantially during periods of elevated volatility, particularly for PAXG and XAUT, indicating stronger risk-reduction benefits under stressed market conditions. Robustness tests using SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) confirm the stability of the main findings. The findings are relevant for portfolio diversification, hedging decisions, and risk management.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070178

Authors: Siddhant Shah Eugene Pinsky

DeFi perpetual futures have expanded from crypto-native instruments to tokenised equities and commodities, yet the economics of these instruments remain poorly understood. We study 17 assets—5 crypto coins, 8 tokenised equities, and 4 tokenised commodities—on three DeFi perpetual platforms (Hyperliquid, EdgeX, Lighter) over July 2025 to February 2026. Applying a rolling 3-day t-test to identify abnormal trading volume without a predetermined event calendar, we document 1797 statistically significant volume anomalies. DeFi perpetual volume is driven primarily by macroeconomic and policy shocks (ADA t=+628 on the U.S. Crypto Strategic Reserve announcement; 15 of 17 assets simultaneously anomalous during January 2026 mega-cap earnings), asset-class-specific catalysts, and a recurring 24/7 market-structure effect tied to weekends and U.S. holidays. Price tracking accuracy reveals a sharp maturity gradient: crypto coin perpetuals exhibit near-perfect price tracking (ρ≥0.999) and strong TradFi volume co-movement (ρ(0)∈[0.72,0.83]), while equity perpetuals show weaker integration and commodity perpetuals range from adequate (oil, gold) to unreliable (natural gas). We conclude that crypto DeFi perpetuals constitute credible synthetic economic claims on underlying assets, while equity and commodity perpetuals remain at an early developmental stage. Integration with traditional financial markets is well-established for crypto coin perpetuals; for equity and commodity perpetuals, the evidence is preliminary, given short observation windows, and further research with longer time series is needed before definitive conclusions can be drawn.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070177

Authors: Faisal Alnori Abdullah Bugshan Walid Bakry

Using an international sample of firms from 47 countries/regions over the years 2010–2020, we examine whether third-party verification of carbon emissions information affects the speed at which firms adjust their capital structure toward the trade-off theory’s optimal leverage target. Using alternative estimation techniques and robustness checks, we find that third-party carbon assurance significantly accelerates firms’ leverage adjustment speed. Firms that engage in independent carbon verification adjust more rapidly toward their target capital structure than non-assured firms. We extended our investigation and confirmed that this effect persists across both developed and developing markets. These results support the notion that carbon assurance is associated with lower information asymmetry between firms and lenders, thereby lowering the cost of external debt and facilitating faster capital structure rebalancing. We further investigate whether the relationship differs by assurance provider type by distinguishing between Big Four and non-Big Four assurance providers. The results remain robust when distinguishing between Big Four and non-Big Four assurance providers regardless of the assurer quality, confirming that assured firms adjust their capital structures faster than non-assured firms. The outcomes of this study demonstrate that firms’ sustainability reporting can shape the speed of capital structure adjustment.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070176

Authors: Andreea Barbu Mirona Ana-Maria Ichimov Mircea Boşcoianu

This study investigates the possibilities for recently listed Romanian Information and Communications Technology (ICT) firms to select optimal sets of financial strategies under adverse macroeconomic conditions, with high and persistent inflation, high volatility, high cost of financing and liquidity constraints that influence investment decisions and financial resilience. Using a stochastic investment model with the Tobin’s Q factor in a dynamic framework equipped with a generalized Wiener process, this study offers an intuitive approach for simultaneously assessing corporate market value under financial constraints and formulating optimal decisions based on liquidity management. In this research, the numerical simulations in Python for a set of 16 scenarios resulting from combining technological and macroeconomic variables were performed, with a series of parameters held constant. The results highlight the decisive role of financial restrictions and macroeconomic volatility in shaping the investment behavior, as well as the importance of adjusting the timing of investments together with liquidity mechanisms capable of improving financial resilience. The main contribution of this study is the simplicity with which one can assess the impact of the risk-free rate and volatility on the main parameters of the set of strategies (earnings dynamics, liquidity risk, cost of capital, liquidation value, opportunity cost associated with holding cash) and to assess the integrated perspective on financial resilience. This procedure is simple and scalable and can also represent a practical tool to support management and investment decisions in volatile and turbulent conditions.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070175

Authors: Benjamin Mudiangombe Mudiangombe Charles Raoul Tchuinkam-Djemo

This study employed a different type of wavelet approach to investigate the dynamic interdependence among exchange rate volatility, stock indices, and energy commodity markets. Using daily data covering the period from 2005 to October 2025 on energy commodities, stock index, and foreign exchange rates of selected BRICS economies. We include both crude oil and Brent oil, along with natural gas, aiming to capture not only the time–frequency interconnectedness among these assets but also to gain deeper insights into cross-commodity correlations across various energy sectors, thereby clarifying whether economic shocks in these markets are localized or globalized. Assessing data volatility, it can be observed that exchange rates and stock indexes tend to be less volatile than oil markets. The coherence zone indicates that foreign currency significantly influences the interdependence between the Bovespa and Brent oil prices. While rising oil prices can generate inflationary pressures, for an oil-exporting nation like Brazil, the favorable impacts on exports and the trade balance often led to an appreciation of the Brazilian Real (BRL) against the US dollar.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070174

Authors: Moch. Fandi Ansori F. Hilal Gümüş Ratna Herdiana Hafidh Khoerul Fata Nurcahya Yulian Ashar Handika Lintang Saputra

Banks must balance deposit stability, loan expansion, and regulatory compliance while operating under liquidity constraints and financial risks. This study presents a mathematical model to examine the dynamics of bank deposits and loans under the influence of liquidity mechanisms and regulatory policies. The model proceeds in three stages: a deterministic nonlinear model, a dynamic optimal control model, and a stochastic model. Under the deterministic model, deposit withdrawals are liquidity-dependent, leading to a feedback mechanism in which liquidity improves deposit stability while financing loan growth. The theoretical results demonstrate the model’s positive and bounded solutions and show the existence and local stability of equilibria. Several parameters are based on regulatory policies or calibrated from Indonesian banking data, while the unknown parameters are estimated using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. The results show that the proposed model is capable of fitting and predicting the data and has slightly lower mean absolute percentage errors for in-sample and out-of-sample compared with the benchmark model, and achieves comparable directional forecasting performance based on the index of directionality. Sensitivity analysis shows that the capital adequacy ratio supports lending, whereas an increased reserve requirement limits lending. An optimal control approach is developed by considering the reserve and capital requirements as time-varying policy variables. By applying Pontryagin’s maximum principle, we establish the necessary conditions for optimality. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the optimal control regulation enhances financial ratios, particularly the loan-to-deposit and liquidity ratios, at a reasonable cost. Finally, the stochastic model accounts for random variations in withdrawals and credit risks. Simulation-based observations reveal that although the system becomes more volatile, the mean dynamics are close to the deterministic case. Our framework offers a data-based and analytically tractable approach for studying the dynamics of banking variables and the effects of regulatory policies. The proposed model provides a mathematical tool for assessing the long-term effects of regulatory policies on banking performance and can assist bank managers and regulators in designing strategies that balance lending activity and liquidity resilience.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070173

Authors: Thalía Marianela Linares Rojas Marco Agustín Arbulú Ballesteros

Financial literacy has become critical for mitigating everyday financial risks and sustaining saving behavior, particularly in professions with stable but often constrained income such as teaching. This study examines whether financial literacy predicts teachers’ saving habits indirectly through financial practices, and whether technological access may be associated with the link between practices and saving. Using a cross-sectional survey of 180 teachers from public educational institutions in the Jequetepeque Valley (Peru) in 2025, we tested a moderated mediation model (PROCESS Model 14). Financial literacy showed a strong positive association with financial practices, while its direct effect on saving habits was not significant after controls. The indirect effect through financial practices was significant across levels of technological access; however, the moderation effect of technological access was only marginally significant (p = 0.057) and the index of moderated mediation did not reach statistical significance at α = 0.05, indicating that the moderating role of technology requires further investigation. Overall, the results suggest that financial knowledge alone does not predict saving habits: the effect operates through consistent financial practices, and digital access may facilitate the continuity of these practices. The study contributes to financial risk management research in teacher populations and to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 4, 8, and 9 in rural educational contexts.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070172

Authors: Ahmad Rajab Jwailes Saleh M. Kadi Ehsan Almoataz Bandar Altubaishe Hamid Ghazi H Sulimany

This study examines the impact of blockchain adoption and financial transparency on corporate performance in Jordan’s banking sector, with a focus on the mediating role of digital accounting systems. Targeting senior managers and financial analysts from Jordan’s banking sector, a sample of 152 participants is analyzed using a quantitative, cross-sectional research design. Data is evaluated through Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results demonstrate that blockchain adoption and financial transparency significantly improve corporate performance, both directly and indirectly, through the mediating effect of digital accounting systems. These findings underscore the importance of integrating blockchain and digital accounting systems to enhance financial transparency, reduce inefficiencies, and build stakeholder trust. This study addresses a critical gap in the literature by exploring the mediating role of digital accounting systems in the relationship between blockchain adoption, financial transparency, and corporate performance, particularly in developing economies. This research offers valuable insights for managers, policymakers, and regulators, emphasizing the strategic value of blockchain and digital accounting systems in driving corporate performance. Its originality lies in combining the Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) framework and Institutional Theory to provide a comprehensive understanding of these dynamics in Jordan’s banking sector.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070171

Authors: Abdelmoneim Bahyeldin Mohamed Metwally Mohamed Samy El-Deeb Ahmed Bahieg Ragheb Mohamed Eman Adel Ahmed

The current study aims to identify the factors influencing the disclosure of climate-related risk information by the MENA banking sector and how bank financial stability acts as a moderator. The study draws from agency theory, resource dependency theory, and organizational legitimacy theory. Textual analysis is used to analyze a panel data set comprising 46 banks of 13 MENA countries for the years 2020 to 2024 (230 observations). We investigate the impact of board independence, board size, and gender diversity on climate risk disclosure. It is found that while board size and gender diversity have a positive effect on CRD, there is no direct effect of board independence on CRD. However, after taking bank financial stability (Z-score) into account as a moderating variable, it is revealed that there is a significantly positive relationship between board independence and bank financial stability. Therefore, it can be said that independent board members are helpful in CRD only when banks have sound financial stability. This study provides various robustness tests through subsample analysis and alternative methods of estimating model parameters.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070170

Authors: Catalin Drob Ioana Plescau Valentin Zichil

This study investigates the long-run and short-run relationships between capital market development, foreign direct investment, trade openness, and real GDP per capita in Romania over 2003–2024, employing the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bound testing approach, complemented by lag-augmented VAR Granger-causality analysis and a comprehensive set of diagnostic and stability tests. The bounds tests strongly reject the null of no cointegration, confirming a long-run relationship that remains robust under finite-sample critical values. The causality analysis demonstrates a supply-leading mechanism from the equity market to real economic activity, while economic growth in turn Granger-causes both market liquidity and trade openness, pointing to demand-following dynamics for these channels. The analysis shows that foreign direct investment, market liquidity, and trade openness exert positive and significant short-run effects; yet their long-run coefficients are negative, significantly for FDI (foreign direct investments), capturing an asymmetry between immediate output gains and durable structural contribution that is characteristic of emerging European economies. The error-correction term is positive, demonstrating that real GDP (gross domestic product) per capita does not adjust back toward the long-run relationship in the conventional sense, but, instead, it behaves as a forcing variable that leads the financial and trade channels rather than being led by them. All in all, the findings describe an economy with functional short-run transmission channels, but limited long-run structural anchoring, with direct relevance for Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 17 and Romania’s ongoing OECD accession.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070169

Authors: Chenxi Wu Thoo Ai Chin Yuihui Dai

As a key engine of corporate innovation, digital transformation permeates business management. Can digital transformation improve corporate financial flexibility by leveraging the external supply chain? Our sample comprises Chinese listed companies over the period from 2015 to 2024, employing Python 3.10 crawling to measure the degree of digital transformation and utilizing the entropy weight method to construct supply chain resilience. Using a moderated mediation model, this analysis examines how corporate innovation mediates the relationship between digital transformation and financial flexibility, and how supply chain resilience exerts a phased moderating effect along this pathway. The findings reveal the following: (1) Digital transformation has a positive effect on financial flexibility, where corporate innovation plays a mediating role. (2) The promoting effect of digital transformation on financial flexibility exhibits significant heterogeneity, varying with firm-specific micro-level characteristics and internal control quality. (3) Supply chain resilience plays a significant moderating role throughout the entire mediation path. It positively moderates the chain of “digital transformation → corporate innovation → financial flexibility”. This study provides empirical evidence on the mechanisms of digital transformation’s impact on corporate financial flexibility and offers a theoretical view for evaluating the outcomes of digital transformation from a financial perspective.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070168

Authors: Venera-Stanca Nicolici Ahmed Adjal Ioana Ionel Eugenia Grecu

In the last 10 years, the global green bond market has reached an estimated value of USD 6.8 trillion. However, credibility concerns persist due to greenwashing risks and issues regarding the reporting system. The current measurement, reporting, and verification systems (MRV) have high uncertainty levels of 10–30%, and so they contribute to information asymmetries and fuel investor skepticism when allocating capital to green bond instruments. The scope of this study is to develop an integrated management approach that links air quality and greenhouse gas monitoring with financial incentives throughout the lifecycle of green bonds. The central contribution is a four-phase lifecycle model covering issuance, allocation, monitoring, and impact reporting, which systematically identifies where greenwashing risks and verification gaps arise across the investment cycle. Methodologically, the study combines qualitative content analysis, a novel Disclosure Quality Score (DQS) instrument, based on the Regulation (EU) 2023/2631, four documentary case studies, and an advanced verification framework. The content analysis shows that regulatory and market-performance studies dominate the literature, while integrated lifecycle verification frameworks remain less explored. The DQS uses eight indicators, applied to a matched sample of green bonds, in accordance with the European Green Bond Standard (EuGB) and the ICMA Green Bond Principles (GBP). The results demonstrate that bonds issued under the EuGB present higher disclosure quality (mean DQS = 15.4/16) compared to GBP-aligned bonds (mean DQS = 11.4/16). Case studies show strong issuance-stage disclosure, but weak post-issuance verification. The framework enables lifecycle-wide accountability by reducing information asymmetry. The proposed lifecycle framework and DQS instrument offer a replicable model for improving disclosure quality and ESG performance standards, with direct implications for sustainable investment screening and ESG fund selection. Overall, the findings show that improving green bond credibility requires moving beyond issuance-focused disclosure toward lifecycle-wide verification.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070167

Authors: Wayne Passmore Roger W. Sparks

This paper analyzes a model of the mortgage market, allowing for scenarios with and without government-sponsored mortgage securitization. Conventional wisdom says that securitization, by fostering diversification and creating a “safe” asset in the form of a mortgage-backed security (MBS), will reduce risk and enhance liquidity, thereby abating financial crises. Our contribution is to examine this claim by imbedding the mortgage market with a sequential strategic game played between the securitizer and banks. In this setting, adverse selection arises from the securitizer’s first-mover advantage rather than from informational asymmetries. In the model, the securitizer chooses the MBS contract terms, including the guaranteed rate and the criterion that qualifies a mortgage for securitization. Banks respond by selecting which qualifying mortgages to exchange for the MBS. Our analysis yields a central result: within this framework, government-sponsored securitization is, somewhat counterintuitively, more likely to exacerbate the severity and frequency of financial crises. This outcome arises in particular when mortgage demand is sufficiently low that originators optimally choose not to retain any higher-risk mortgages on their balance sheets.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14070166

Authors: Mohammed Alhashim

This paper analyses the dynamics of connectedness among technology-oriented assets, such as fintech, blockchain, cybersecurity, internet, and disruptive technology indices, on the effect of political signal quality on the transmission of spillovers. Applying the Time-Varying Parameter Vector Autoregressive (TVP-VAR) model with frequency-based connectedness, the paper explores dynamic, horizon-dependent spillovers in the interconnection of innovation-based financial markets from January 2015 to April 2025. The findings show consistently high interconnectedness among 4IR assets, but this level increases significantly during the COVID-19 outbreak and the Russia–Ukraine conflict. It is also found that disruptive technology and fintech indices dominate shock transmission among interconnectedness networks. Based on the frequency decomposition approach, it is evident that spillovers arise from short-run dynamics, indicating that 4IR financial systems respond quickly to uncertainty shocks and to synchronized investor behavior. The regression and quantile regression analyses indicate a conditional effect of political signal quality on connectedness, especially during crisis periods marked by higher market uncertainty and stress. Specifically, it is evident that a deterioration in political signal quality increases spillover effects due to information uncertainty and expectation-based investor behavior. This means that, in an innovation-driven financial system, uncertainty is not just transmitted through macroeconomic and financial factors, but also through political communication and information uncertainty. In summary, this paper adds to the existing literature on connectedness by considering political information quality uncertainty in analyzing the 4IR financial system and by identifying how technological integration makes the financial market vulnerable during crises.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14060165

Authors: Hanzhong Zheng Xuemeng Guo Lingpeng Kong

Using panel data for 135 Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2007 to 2023, this study investigates the impact of new digital infrastructure on green finance development. The new digital infrastructure indicator is constructed based on the proportion of relevant keywords appearing in government work reports, while the green finance index is reconstructed using the entropy-weighting method across seven dimensions. The estimation results indicate that new digital infrastructure exerts a significant positive effect on green finance development. This conclusion remains robust after a series of robustness checks, including alternative variable measurements, winsorization treatment, and instrumental-variable estimation. Mechanism analysis reveals that industrial structure upgrading, particularly the advancement of industrial structure, serves as an important transmission channel. Further heterogeneity analysis shows that the promoting effect is more pronounced in cities with larger economic scale, those located outside major urban agglomerations, and cities with higher levels of financial resource aggregation. These findings provide empirical evidence for the role of digital infrastructure in fostering green finance and facilitating sustainable regional development.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14060164

Authors: Vytautas Snieska Daiva Burksaitiene Valentinas Navickas

This paper examines the drivers of house price cycles across EU countries between 2005 and 2024 and measures their synchronicity. We used panel data methods—fixed effects, dynamic panel models (Arellano–Bond GMM), and a pooled VAR framework—to capture static and dynamic relationships between house price growth and key macroeconomic variables. The results show that the dynamics of house prices are highly persistent. GDP growth has a clear positive effect, while higher unemployment and interest rates push prices down. Migration flows, however, are not statistically significant at the EU aggregate level. Property taxation shows a positive coefficient, which probably reflects structural and institutional differences rather than a direct dampening effect on prices. Dynamic analysis suggests that macroeconomic shocks have persistent and economically meaningful impacts on house price growth. Hierarchical cluster analysis revealed three distinct groups of countries, meaning that house price cycles are only partially synchronized across the EU. Unlike previous studies that typically examine individual determinants or synchronization separately, this study integrates panel econometric methods, dynamic VAR analysis, and hierarchical clustering within a unified framework to jointly assess macroeconomic drivers, dynamic interactions, and structural heterogeneity of house price cycles across EU countries. In general, common macroeconomic drivers and structural heterogeneity coexist—this is important for the stability of the housing market and sustainable development.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14060163

Authors: Abdulazeez Y. H. Saif-Alyousfi Abdullah Alsadan Ahmed Alrashed

This study examines how energy market uncertainty affects corporate financial stability and whether environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance mitigates this relationship. Using a panel of 168 non-financial Australian firms from 2011 to 2023, we employ a two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM) with extensive robustness checks. The results reveal three central findings. First, energy market uncertainty exerts a statistically significant and economically meaningful negative effect on corporate financial stability, indicating that heightened energy price volatility amplifies firms’ financial fragility. Second, ESG performance is positively associated with financial stability, suggesting that sustainability-oriented firms exhibit superior risk management and resilience. Third, ESG performance significantly attenuates the adverse impact of energy market uncertainty, providing strong evidence that ESG functions as an effective shock-absorbing mechanism. These findings are robust to alternative measures of financial stability and energy uncertainty, different lag structures, alternative estimation methods, and a wide range of subsample analyses. Further analyses show that the moderating role of ESG is not driven by a single pillar; rather, environmental, social, and governance dimensions jointly enhance firms’ capacity to withstand energy-related shocks. The buffering effect of ESG is stronger among high-ESG firms, in knowledge- and technology-intensive sectors, and during periods of heightened systemic stress such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, the study provides novel firm-level evidence that ESG performance enhances corporate resilience to energy market uncertainty. The findings have important implications for policymakers, investors, and corporate managers seeking to strengthen financial stability in an era of elevated energy volatility and accelerating sustainability transitions.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14060162

Authors: Ramesh Adhikari YoungHa Ki

This study provides a comprehensive examination of the inflation-hedging potential of commodity indices and futures for U.S. investors using monthly data spanning July 1959 to December 2025 for 27 individual commodities, and January 1947 to November 2025 for 13 commodity indices. We employ multiple complementary methodologies, including optimal hedge ratios with Newey–West standard errors, asymmetric hedging analysis, long-horizon regressions, rolling window stability tests, Granger causality analysis, out-of-sample validation, and Markov-switching vector error correction models (MS-VECM). Our results reveal substantial heterogeneity in hedging effectiveness across commodity sectors. Energy commodities, particularly gasoline and crude oil, demonstrate the strongest inflation-hedging properties with higher hedge ratios and hedging effectiveness. Industrial metals, represented by copper, also provide reliable hedging with stable performance across market conditions. In contrast, precious metals, including gold and silver, show weak contemporaneous hedging ability despite their traditional safe-haven reputation, though they may offer protection during specific market regimes. Agricultural commodities and livestock exhibit minimal or negative hedging effectiveness. The MS-VECM analysis confirms that hedging relationships are time-varying, with effectiveness differing significantly between stable and turbulent market regimes. These findings have important implications for portfolio construction and risk management strategies.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14060161

Authors: Fadi Al-Asfour

This paper provides a theory-informed synthesis of earnings management research through a review of the 100 most cited studies in the accounting literature. Rather than functioning as a purely bibliometric review, the study integrates theoretical, empirical, methodological, and survey-based contributions to examine how influential research has conceptualized, measured, and interpreted earnings management. Citation data were collected from Web of Science and Google Scholar as of 5 January 2025 using predefined search criteria, filtering procedures, and classification protocols. While citation counts are used to identify influential studies, they are not treated as direct indicators of research quality due to concerns regarding citation bias, publication visibility, and proxy limitations. The review organizes the literature around major themes, including corporate governance, audit quality, managerial incentives, institutional environments, market reactions, and regulatory change. The analysis highlights enduring debates concerning proxy validity, endogeneity and identification challenges, the distinction between statistical detection and economic significance, and the trade-off between accrual-based and real earnings management. The synthesis also incorporates emerging research streams involving family firms, gender diversity, ESG reporting, textual analysis, and AI-assisted analytics within broader agency and institutional theory perspectives. A central contribution of the paper is the development of an integrative analytical framework linking proxy validity, strategic substitution between reporting mechanisms, and institutional constraints within a unified interpretation of earnings management behavior. The review shows that advances in empirical design, textual analysis, machine learning, and predictive analytics extend rather than replace foundational insights, while persistent limitations in causal inference and measurement remain unresolved. Overall, the findings suggest that earnings management is best understood as a strategic response to incentives, monitoring, and institutional constraints rather than as a uniform indicator of opportunistic behavior. The paper concludes by outlining future research directions focused on theory-driven empirical design, methodological triangulation, AI-assisted detection approaches, and improved measurement frameworks across diverse reporting environments.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14060160

Authors: Viktor Koziuk Jurij Klapkiv

This paper examines whether legal origins influence the anti-inflationary effectiveness of central banks. While prior literature emphasizes the role of institutional frameworks in shaping financial systems, less attention has been paid to how legal traditions affect the relationship between central bank independence and inflation stability. Using a distance-to-frontier approach, we construct a gap measure between central bank independence and inflation performance. The results indicate that countries with a common law origin exhibit a significantly larger negative gap, suggesting higher anti-inflationary effectiveness despite lower formal central bank independence. In contrast, civil law countries tend to rely more heavily on formal institutional strengthening to achieve comparable inflation outcomes. Regression analysis confirms that the common law proxy remains statistically significant across most model specifications and demonstrates stronger explanatory power than traditional governance indicators such as the rule of law.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14060159

Authors: Titi Khoiriah Rofikoh Rokhim Buddi Wibowo

The 2008 financial crisis pushed policymakers around the world to rethink how banks could manage risk, leading to the implementation of stricter regulations, including capital buffers and bail-in mechanisms, aimed at making the financial system more resilient. This study examines how three key regulations under Basel III, namely, the Countercyclical Capital Buffer (CCyB), the Capital Conservation Buffer (CCB), and the Capital Surcharge (CS), shape lending patterns in Indonesian banks. The effectiveness of the bail-in policy in helping banks strengthen their capital base is also examined. This study uses difference-in-differences analysis on panel data from 97 banks between 2010 and 2024 to examine the impact of stricter capital regulations on banks’ ability to channel credit to the public and business sectors. Basel III aims to strengthen the resilience of banks; however, this policy could impact credit access and banking stability in Indonesia. This study found a positive impact on LDR of large banks after the treatment, which indicates the banks’ efforts to use the funds collected through credit distribution. This study empirically examines the impact of capital buffer regulation and the bail-in instrument in Indonesia as an emerging-market country with a segmented banking sector and banks’ classification by ownership and core capital value.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14060156

Authors: Muhammad Haroon Rasheed Rabia Farooq Abdulrahman Alomair Mohammed Alomair

The global financial system is constantly evolving through technological integration. This has led to the inception and rise in the cryptocurrency market, opening new avenues of comparative studies on market behavior. Therefore, the current study aimed to identify nuances in stock and cryptocurrency behavior. Based on the socionomic theory of finance, the study is a pioneer in considering the interplay of economic, market, and social media sentiments while providing a comparative view of cryptocurrencies and stocks. The study utilizes data of economic news sentiments, cryptocurrency fear and greed index, CNN fear and greed index, and Twitter sentiments against the movement of S&P Cryptocurrencies and S&P 500 stock index return spanning from 2018 to 2023. The study applied a vector autoregressive-based spillover model to assess the theorized linkage and applied robustness measures, including linear regression and the Granger causality test, for validation. The findings unveil distinct weak and moderate associations of sentiments across cryptocurrencies and stocks, respectively. The former is primarily driven by market sentiments while shaping economic news and social media sentiments. Meanwhile, the findings for stock return movements are found to be significantly associated with economic and market sentiments. This led to the inference that the cryptocurrency environment is an isolated system driven by internal sentiments, while stock markets are more economically integrated, and in both cases, social media sentiments are found to be the receiver of market spillover, weakly influencing economic news. The study is pioneering in its exploration of the interlinkage between selected macroeconomic sentiments; additionally, the comparative findings further add to the existing debate on influence of sentiment across financial markets. The varying realities identified in the findings hold significant practical implications for portfolio optimization, risk assessment and policy making.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14060158

Authors: Eddie Y. M. Lam Joseph K. W. Fung Calvin Y. C. Lee

This study revisits the winner’s curse hypothesis in Hong Kong’s Growth Enterprise Market, examining how public retail participation is associated with IPO first-day returns from 1999 to 2023. IPOs allocated through placement-only and placement plus sale methods deliver extraordinary first-day returns of 200.9% and 231.0%, while those with public subscription dropped to 32.5% and 10.5%. Regression analysis further confirms the negative correlation between retail allocation and first-day returns. The study also underscores policy implications of the 2018 reforms mandating at least 10% public allocation, which coincide with, and may have contributed to, the sharp decline in the number of Hong Kong’s GEM IPOs.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14060157

Authors: Birhanu Daba Chali Vilmos Lakatos

This bibliometric review examines the relationship between corporate governance and financial performance by synthesising evidence from a broad range of empirical studies. It also identifies key patterns in publication output, citation trends, and scholarly impact within the field. Following the PRISMA guidelines, a bibliometric review was conducted using articles indexed in the Scopus database. A total of 2095 articles published between 2020 and September 2025 were initially retrieved synthesising via a keyword search with the string “Corporate Governance” AND “Financial Performance.” After applying the inclusion criteria (full-text availability, English language, and relevance to the topic), 887 articles were retained for analysis. The findings indicate that most studies report a positive association between corporate governance practices and financial performance. The literature is primarily concentrated around themes such as corporate governance, financial performance, ESG practices, and board characteristics, with the connection between governance and a firm’s financial performance appearing generally positive, albeit context dependent. The results also reveal a growing research emphasis on sustainability-oriented governance, particularly ESG-related factors, reflecting a broader shift in the field towards long-term value creation. This review underscores the importance of nuanced corporate governance frameworks for stakeholders seeking to enhance the sustainability of financial performance, while also deepening understanding of the impact of governance on firm financial performance among both academics and practitioners. In addition, the review offers a broader perspective on the existing literature and identifies several gaps that warrant further investigation.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14060155

Authors: Yifei Chen Shuo Wang

As a major policy initiative, China’s Industry–Finance Cooperation (IFC) Pilot Program aims to address the enduring difficulties enterprises face in securing affordable financing. Despite its intent, the policy’s actual efficacy in alleviating corporate financing constraints remains ambiguous. Based on panel data of Chinese A-share listed firms (2011–2023, 19,742 observations), this paper adopts a difference-in-differences (DID) estimator to investigate the effect of China’s IFC Pilot Policy on corporate financing constraints. The results demonstrate that the IFC Pilot Policy significantly alleviates such constraints. Further mechanism and heterogeneity analyses reveal that it operates primarily by reducing earning management, lowering financing costs, and mitigating business risks. This study contributes to the field by establishing the finance-easing effect and risk management mechanism of industry–finance cooperation, offering valuable guidance for policymakers seeking to refine and optimize similar supply-side financial reform measures.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14060154

Authors: Zouhair Boumlik Olivier Colot Badia Oulhadj

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the firm-level determinants of the cost of debt in a bank-based emerging economy, where debt serves as the primary external financing mechanism, enabling firms to maintain operations, pursue growth opportunities, and ensure long-term financial sustainability. Using panel data from non-financial firms listed on the Casablanca Stock Exchange over the period 2018–2024, we document a robust nonlinear relationship between financial leverage and the cost of debt, whereby low and moderate debt levels reduce borrowing costs by signaling creditworthiness and financing capacity, while excessive indebtedness reverses this effect, with an optimal threshold estimated at approximately 34.8% of total assets. Firms with stronger growth prospects further benefit from more favorable financing conditions, as creditors interpret sustained asset expansion as a signal of financial strength and long-term viability. Financial performance is also found to reduce the cost of debt, although this effect is not fully robust to endogeneity controls. In contrast, asset tangibility, firm size, firm age, and liquidity do not emerge as significant determinants, suggesting that creditors in the Moroccan market adopt a financial health-oriented approach when assessing credit risk, placing greater emphasis on leverage and growth prospects than on collateral-based or reputational signals. Overall, the study highlights the coexistence of linear and nonlinear dynamics in debt pricing, thereby enriching the corporate finance literature and providing insights for managers and policymakers seeking to reduce borrowing costs, enhance access to debt financing, and support sustainable value creation.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14060153

Authors: Abdulaziz S. Al Naim Abdulrahman Alomair Alan Farley Helen Yang

This study examines the moderating effect of firm attributes on the value relevance of accounting information in Saudi Arabia. Using a sample of 630 firm-year observations from 126 Saudi listed firms over 2018–2022, the research evaluates whether audit quality, size, leverage, growth potential, board diversity, and profitability complement the valuation role of earnings per share (EPS) and book value per share (BVPS) and if so then which direction of the attribute gave greater value relevance. Results reveal that all the firm attributes tested have a significant moderating effect on value relevance. Lower leverage, higher growth potential, greater board diversity, and profitability all lead to higher predicted market value for given EPS and BVPS. Big 4 audit quality and larger firm size are found to moderate the value relevance of accounting information rather than to influence share price directly. Both attributes strengthen the value relevance of earnings per share (EPS)—the EPS coefficient is significantly higher for firms audited by a Big 4 firm and for larger firms—while weakening the value relevance of book value per share (BVPS), with the BVPS coefficient being significantly lower in both cases. The combined effect is that earnings carry greater pricing weight, and book values carry lesser pricing weight, when audit quality is high and when firms are larger. Results also reveal that cohorts with Big 4 auditor, larger size, lower leverage, higher growth potential, more diverse boards, and profitability all have greater value relevance (higher R2) than cohorts with the alternative for each attribute. Hence, tests provide evidence that these attributes strengthen the association between selective accounting figures (EPS and BVPS) and share prices. The findings contribute to agency, information asymmetry, and value-relevance theory by showing that firm attributes condition the EPS and BVPS pricing weights rather than affecting price directly. The results have implications for regulators and firms seeking to improve financial reporting credibility and usefulness amid concentrated ownership. This study contributes timely empirical evidence on the multifaceted drivers of value relevance in an under-researched Middle Eastern emerging market.

International Journal of Financial Studies doi: 10.3390/ijfs14060152

Authors: Ramalingam Shanmugam Michael Mileski Bradley Beauvais Zo Ramamonjiarivelo Jose Betancourt Gerald Pacheco Rohit Pradhan

This study introduces a multivariate distance-based framework for analyzing hospital liquidity stress using three financial indicators: cash reserves, days with negative cash, and accounts receivable. Using Definitive Healthcare data from 2020–2025, the study applies principal component analysis (PCA), Mahalanobis distance, Aitchison distance, and ternary plots to characterize structural relationships among these liquidity variables. The results show that the first two principal components explain more than 94% of the variation in the transformed variables, indicating that the joint financial structure can be represented in a lower-dimensional space. Beginning in 2023, accounts receivable became more geometrically separated from the cash-based variables, suggesting that revenue-cycle dynamics may have become a more independent dimension of hospital liquidity stress. Importantly, this manuscript does not directly predict hospital closure or bankruptcy because verified event/non-event outcome data are not available in the analytic file. Instead, its contribution is methodological and exploratory: it demonstrates how distance-based and compositional methods can identify structural liquidity instability and potential early warning signals that warrant further validation with longitudinal closure, bankruptcy, or severe-distress outcomes.