Search Results (11)

As global concerns over climate change intensify, carbon information disclosure has emerged as a critical factor influencing firm value. However, the relationship between carbon information disclosure and firm value remains inconclusive in the existing literature, particularly within the context of China’s evolving environmental policies. This study investigates the impact of carbon information disclosure on firm value while examining the moderating role of green innovation and the moderating moderated effect of environmental regulation. Drawing on stakeholder theory, resource-based theory, and institutional theory, this study constructs a comprehensive research framework and employs panel data regression analysis on a sample of 1753 firm ten-year observations from A-share listed companies in China between 2013 and 2022. The results reveal that carbon information disclosure significantly enhances firm value, and green innovation positively moderates this relationship. Furthermore, environmental regulation strengthens the moderating effect of green innovation, acting as a leverage effect that amplifies the financial benefits of carbon information disclosure. These findings highlight the importance of integrating regulatory policies with corporate sustainability strategies. This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the synergistic effects of carbon information disclosure, green innovation, and environmental regulation, offering insights for sustainable corporate development. Full article

In this study, we explore the financial and economic integration of BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and key emerging economies (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE) using graph theory, aiming to map intersectoral connections and their impact on financial stability and market risk. The research addresses a critical gap in the literature; while political and economic linkages between nations have been widely studied, the specific connectivity between sectors within these economies remains underexplored. Our methodology utilizes eigenvector centrality and Euclidean distance to construct a comprehensive network of 106 publicly listed firms from 2013 to 2022, across sectors such as energy, telecommunications, retail, and technology. The primary hypothesis is that sectors with higher centrality scores—indicative of their interconnectedness within the broader financial network—demonstrate greater resilience to market volatility and contribute disproportionately to sectoral profitability. The analysis yielded several key insights. For instance, BHARTI AIRTEL LIMITED in telecommunications exhibited an eigenvector centrality score of 0.9615, positioning it as a critical node in maintaining sectoral stability, while AMBEV SA in the retail sector, with a centrality score of 0.9938, emerged as a pivotal player influencing both profitability and risk. Sectors led by companies with high centrality showed a 20% increase in risk-adjusted returns compared to less connected entities, supporting the hypothesis that central firms act as stabilizers in fluctuating market conditions. The findings underscore the practical implications for policymakers and investors alike. Understanding the structure of these networks allows for more informed decision making in terms of investment strategies and macroeconomic policy. By identifying the central entities within these economic systems, both policymakers and investors can target their efforts more effectively, either to support growth initiatives or to mitigate systemic risks. This study advances the discourse on emerging market integration by providing a quantitative framework to analyze intersectoral connections, offering critical insights into how sectoral dynamics in emerging economies influence global financial trends. Full article

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) was usually referred to as a concept where companies initiate voluntary action towards social and environmental concerns in the context of business operations related to the stakeholders of the company prior to the CSR Act 2013 in India. Post-2013, the voluntary initiative was replaced by regulatory guidelines to address social and environmental concerns. The CSR applicability–investment gap was used as a base concept in this study with instrumental theory; the study offers a strategic perspective of CSR and how organizations emphasized maximizing stakeholders’ value. In order to further investigate the effect of CSR on corporate financial performance (CFP) through the measure of shareholders’ value, i.e., the return on equity (ROE), the study used the sample from the National Stock Exchange (NSE)-Nifty-100 indexed companies of Emerging Economy—India for a span of fourteen years (2009–2023). The vast majority of research in this domain is conducted in developed countries; the research gap is filled by this study by considering India and drawing samples from multiple industries. The empirical model was developed by using panel data regression, where the dependent variable was ROE, and the independent variables were earning per share (EPS), log total income (LTI), CSR applicability/profit after tax (CRSAPPPAT), and CSR investment/profit after tax (CSRIPAT). The findings also highlighted the CSR applicability and investment of the firms during pre- and post-Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) periods. The same was also analyzed for the firms committed to CSR and not committed to CSR. The results indicated that there is no significant impact of the CSR/ESG initiatives (applicability and investment) on the ROE of the firms. The performance could be better if the companies minimize the CSR/ESG promise–performance gap through effective communication with stakeholders. Full article

This study investigated the financial signals that have been ignored or have failed to be controlled by J. Crew Inc. from 2013 until 2019. Exploratory research is carried out with the help of secondary data which was collected from the downloaded formal documents submitted by J. Crew Inc. to the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC). Researchers analyzed these documents and prepared statements on vertical income statement, vertical balance sheet, horizontal income statement, horizontal balance sheet, trend analysis of income statement, and trend analysis of balance sheet, as well as ratio analysis on liquidity, long-term solvency, profitability, and turnover ratios with the help of excel. This paper has identified total of 15 alarming signs that companies either ignored, could not control, or did not act with alertness towards to stop the business being taken out of hands. In this research paper, the establishment of J. Crew Inc. was presented in four sections: Crew Retail Stores, Crew Factory Stores, Crew Mercantile Stores, and Crew Madewell Stores. The results of this study show that it was not the COVID-19 pandemic that pushed this retail giant into bankruptcy, but numerous reasons and financial turbulences. J. Crew’s financial performance gave plenty of alarming signals that the showed the company was not on track, but these were ignored by the company. Right from net profit, operating expenses, total revenue, goodwill, return on assets, liquidity, and solvency, all 15 indicators were not meeting the industry ideal standard for a continuous period of 5 years. Whether or not the organization can rebuild and contend in a post-pandemic world, is not yet clear. Full article

This study investigates discretionary earnings management practices, tracing the changes over the years in selected top performing and highly liquid listed Indian firms. It empirically measures the impact of corporate governance, financial legislation and global reporting standards on the firms’ earnings management practices. The study analyses a sample of 712 firm-year data comprising 89 listed Indian companies across 7 different sectoral indices of the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) over 8 years (2011–2018). The Modified Jones model was used to compute Discretionary Accruals to measure Earnings Management based on data obtained using Bloomberg terminals. Statistical results and plots generated in Stata offer evidence that instances of earnings management have significantly reduced after the enactment of the Companies Act 2013 and the adoption of Indian Accounting standards which are converged with the IFRS. Findings suggest that services firms are engaging in relatively higher levels of earnings management compared to manufacturing firms. This study reveals the positive impact of improved corporate governance, regulation, and enforcement by significantly reducing the levels of earnings management among listed firms in India. Full article

This study was devised to examine the pattern of disturbance and reclamation by Tronox, which instigated a closure process for its Hillendale mine site in South Africa, where they recovered zirconium- and titanium-bearing minerals from 2001 to 2013. Restoring mined-out areas is of great importance in South Africa, with its ominous record of almost 6000 abandoned mines since the 1860s. In 2002, the government enacted the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (No. 28 of 2002) to enforce extracting companies to restore mined-out areas before pursuing closure permits. Thus, the trajectory of the Hillendale mine remains unstudied despite advances in the satellite remote sensing technology that is widely used in this field. Here, we retrieved a collection of Landsat-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) within the Google Earth Engine and applied the Detecting Breakpoints and Estimating Segments in Trend (DBEST) algorithm to examine the progress of vegetation transformation over the Hillendale mine between 2001 and 2019. Our results showed key breakpoints in NDVI, a drop from 2001, reaching the lowest point in 2009–2011, with a marked recovery pattern after 2013 when the restoration program started. We also validated our results using a random forests strategy that separated vegetated and non-vegetated areas with an accuracy exceeding 78%. Overall, our findings are expected to encourage users to replicate this affordable application, particularly in emerging countries with similar cases. Full article

According to a statement made in the BP Energy Outlook report in 2017, most of the world’s liquid fuel (petroleum) is being consumed by the transportation industry. The mechanisms used to stimulate changes in the energy markets are affected by government policies that act in more ambitious ways than purely market-driven forces; different governments have promoted incentives involving electric mobility, especially in urban areas. The substitution for crude oil by renewable energy inputs in the transport sector is a major concern for oil producers. Among the different types of clean energies, lithium (Li) is currently assuming an increasingly strategic role. The goals of this paper are two-fold: First, we study the dynamics of the lithium industry and then the beta risk behavior of the 10 largest oil companies in the world for the time period between 11 February 2008 and 10 January 2019. We use an approach based on the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) method. The results indicate that there is a period of dependence between late 2013 and 2016 that occurs in the long-run frequencies of between 32 and 198 days for all cases, except for in the case of PetroChina, thereby demonstrating that the beta term is time-varying. We also find evidence that the beta term reflects and advances oil companies’ responsiveness to movements in the lithium market. In the second part of the paper, we study the dynamics of the beta series by using long-run dependence approaches. The results indicate that the betas are highly persistent, with the order of integration found to be significantly above 1 in all cases. Full article

Developing prosperous and inclusive societies requires a reformulation of the business-society nexus toward sustainability. This means that all economically motivated behaviors of firms also need to consider their social and environmental impact, and all social and environmental policies their impact on the business sector and the economy. With the Companies Act 2013, the Indian government adopted a legislative approach to reconfigure the business-society nexus. Mandating what has been considered discretionary elicited an extensive academic debate. To study this India-specific political corporate social responsibility (CSR), we employ Content Configuration Analysis on 70 local and international English-language book chapters, research articles, reports, reviews, and expert commentaries published between 2013 and 2019 to develop a typology of the advantages and disadvantages associated with the Companies Act 2013. Among a large number of positions for and against the Act, we find that arguments extolling its advantages concurrently appear as disadvantages in other texts. This paradox is indicative of the difficulties of satisfying stakeholder expectations, as well as the complexities corporate responsibility programs face in India. Nonetheless, CSR as a policy tool allows the Indian government to instrumentalize the growing success of the business sector to address local and national needs and expectations. By systematizing the opportunities and challenges associated with the Companies Act 2013, we show how, similar to China, context and culture influence India’s socioeconomic development trajectory beyond the conventional market economy canon. Our analyses reveal how advantages and disadvantages are frequently connected to multiple stakeholders, including the government, business, and society. We conclude by highlighting the contribution this study makes to the field of political CSR. Full article

The existing corporate environmental disclosure (CED) research focuses primarily on large companies operating in a single jurisdiction, leaving a gap of knowledge regarding the subsidiary operations of multinational corporations. In this study, consolidated narrative interrogation (CONI) is used to quantify CEDs presented in annual and stand-alone sustainability reports published over a 15-year span between 2002 and 2016 by agrochemical companies operating in India. Results show that the diversity, the quantity, and the quality of CED vary significantly, but generally each of them has been improving over time—most notably following the revisions to the Companies Act in 2013. The study finds that the subsidiaries of multinational agrochemical corporations implemented CED practices more strongly associated with those of domestic companies than those found in the reports produced by their parent companies. The CED of both subsidiary and domestic companies appears to reflect concerns of local legitimacy. Full article

In response to the financial crisis, a number of reforms to bank regulation have been introduced. Many of these reforms seek to improve the resilience of banks through making changes to their structure. In the U.K., the Banking Reform Act 2013 was enacted. This study attempts to examine the market’s reaction to this important financial reform, on the stock price of banks and insurance companies and contributes to the current regulatory debate. As reform proposals take time to get converted into Law, this paper focuses on three legislative events extracted from the Parliament website; the third reading at the House of Commons, the third reading at the House of Lords, and the Royal Assent, effectively the stages from which reform proposals convert to Law. This study employs an event study methodology, based on a sample consisting of 24 major banks and insurance companies listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) for which data are available from 30/11/2012 to 18/12/2013 covering all three events. The findings are that banks’ shares reacted positively, whereas insurance companies’ shares reacted negatively to the passage of the Banking Reform Act 2013 in the House of Commons (first event); insurance companies experienced negative returns, whereas banks’ returns did not react significantly in relation to the passage of the Act in the House of Lords (second event); and finally, banks’ shares reacted positively while insurance companies’ shares reacted negatively when the Act received the Royal Assent (third event). One of the main intentions of the Banking Reform Act 2013, was to contain the risk taken by banks. Market reaction on banks’ shares shows that the market accepted this; on the other hand, the negative effect on the shares of insurance companies would imply that insurance companies are perceived to have taken on some additional risk as a consequence of the Act. Full article

The slow reaction of French authorities to the so-called Mediator^® saga in 2009 in France led to investigations that questioned the way conflicts of interest are reported. France implemented the Loi Bertrand (‘Bertrand Law’) in May 2013, known as the ‘French Sunshine Act’, with the aim of specifying the scope of disclosure obligations. This policy research reviewed the Loi Bertrand and reported case law from the French Council of State (COS) related to conflicts of interest in French Health technology assessment (HTA) opinion. The Loi Bertrand requires the publication of most of the agreements concluded between health-care professionals and companies and covers a vast range of health products. Commercial sales agreements of goods and services concluded between manufacturers and health-care professionals are a strong exception to this disclosure obligation. Six cases examined by the COS were analyzed, most of them related to the publication of guidelines or the removal of products from the list of reimbursed drugs and devices. These cases have been reviewed, as well as the impact of the ruling on reimbursement decisions. Four cases led to suspension or invalidation of decisions based on the Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS) recommendations due to conflicts of interest. In the two other cases, the HAS provided post hoc declarations of interest when required by the COS, and the COS considered the conflicts of interest as irrelevant for the decision. It appears that the COS based its decisions on two main criteria: the acknowledgement of negative conflicts of interest (a link with competitors) and the absence of declarations of conflicts of interest, which have to be presented when required by legal authorities irrespective of when they were completed (even posterior to the HAS opinion). However, the number of cases that have been decided against the HAS remains very limited with respect to the volume of assessments performed yearly. The strengthening of the regulation on declarations of interest might lead to more transparency but also to more cases decided by the COS. A new press investigation (in March 2015) related to alleged cases of conflict of interests led policy makers to amend the Bertrand Law in April 2015 and require the disclosure of amounts paid to health-care professionals by the industry. Full article