This paper aims to examine the volatility spillover, diversification benefits, and hedge ratios between U.S. stock markets and different financial variables and commodities during the pre-COVID-19 and COVID-19 crisis, using daily data and multivariate GARCH models. Our results indicate that the risk spillover has reached the highest level during the COVID-19 period, compared to the pre-COVID period, which means that the COVID-19 pandemic enforced the risk spillover between U.S. stock markets and the remains assets. We confirm the economic benefit of diversification in both tranquil and crisis periods (e.g., a negative dynamic conditional correlation between the VIX and SP500). Moreover, the hedging analysis exhibits that the Dow Jones Islamic has the highest hedging effectiveness either before or during the recent COVID19 crisis, offering better resistance to uncertainty caused by unpredictable turmoil such as the COVID19 outbreak. Our finding may have some implications for portfolio managers and investors to reduce their exposure to the risk in their portfolio construction.

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the impact of the R&D geographic diversification on the shareholders’ wealth (as measured appreciatively by the firm's market value) and on the earnings management as a mechanism of manager's entrainment. Using a sample of 460 firm‐year observations for multinational firms over the 2002–2006 period, we find that the R&D decentralization may enhance the shareholders’ wealth and increase the managers’ one. The results show that the R&D geographic diversification increases the informational asymmetry and support the emergence of the favourable conditions for the earnings management and the managers’ entrainment. It may increase the managers’ autonomy which likely allows them to manage the result in order to increase their own wealth and destruct the shareholder's one.

This study seeks to explain the management entrenchment by investment of free cash flow (FCF)