This research contributes to the existing corporate governance (CG) and social and environmental accountability (SEA) literature by exploring the impact of CG mechanisms (board independence, board size, CEO duality, and board gender diversity) on Chinese firms’ environmental performance, sustainability performance, and environmental information disclosures (EID). Furthermore, the investigation consequently ascertains the amount to which the CG–SEA connection is influenced by CEO qualities. Using a dynamic model of a SysGMM regression model, we found that board size, independence, and gender diversity in board and CEO duality are all favorably connected to Chinese enterprises’ environmental performance over a window of 10 years (2010–2019). Additionally, our findings imply that the analyzed CEO characteristics positively moderate the relationship between CG and SEA. Our findings have significant consequences for all stakeholders, including environmentalists, corporate regulators, CEOs, policymakers, and regulators.

We study the nexus between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and corporate capital financing decisions. Further, we also analyze the effect of audit quality and type of ownership (state-owned enterprises (SOEs) vs non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs), local vs central SOEs in this relationship. By applying panel regression (fixed effects) on 6295 firm-year observations of Chinese A-listed enterprises data for 2010–2019, we conclude that firms’ ESG information is crucial to their financing decisions. In particular, firms with superior ESG performance have lower debt financing. The findings suggest that enterprises with strong ESG performance have easy access to equity funding via stock markets. Further, this relationship is more pronounced in SOE compared to non-SOEs and in central SOEs compared to local SOEs. These results demonstrate that the market may promote desired social outcomes by rewarding ESG performance; however, we find no significant effect of audit quality in this relationship. Findings are robust to different sensitivity tests, including an alternative estimation, sysGMM regression to address endogeneity issues, and lagged regressions to address reverse causality.

The world experienced significant changes in its social and economic lives in 2020–21. Major stock markets experienced an immediate decline. This paper attempts to examine the impact of COVID-19 on stock market performance as well as to identify the differences between the responses of ESG stocks and normal stocks to pandemic conditions in the Arab region. Daily time series for three years between March 2019 and March 2021 were collected for the S&P Pan Arab Composite index and S&P/Hawkamah ESG Pan Arab Index. We used a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model to measure market shocks and a non-linear autoregressive distributed lagged (NARDL) regression model to display the relationship between COVID-19 measurements and the performance of stock indexes. The findings suggest that the volatilities of ESG portfolios and conventional ones were equally affected in the pre-COVID period. However, in the post-COVID period, the magnitude of volatility in the ESG stock index was significantly less compared to that of the conventional stock index. The results also revealed that in the ESG market, shock tended to remain for a shorter period. Furthermore, the ESG index was not affected by the number of confirmed cases and deaths. However, evidence of asymmetric long-run cointegration existed between the S&P index and number of cases and deaths. Increases in the numbers of cases and deaths caused a decline in market index, whereas the reverse trends were observed in the retreat of the pandemic.

The pre-eminence of Islamic finance from the perspective of economic growth has been a long-standing debate. In recent decades, there has been a paradigm shift from interest-based banking to Islamic financial system. This study intends to examine the dynamic interaction of Islamic financial depth (IFD), Islamic financial intermediation (IFI), and asset quality with economic growth in a dual banking system. The paper employs autoregressive distributive lag regression (ARDL), error correction model (ECM) and Granger causality to examine the long and short run linkage by using the quarterly data of Pakistan from 2005 to 2019. The authors run two models to analyze the relative importance of financial depths (Islamic and conventional), financial intermediation (Islamic and conventional), and asset quality of both financial systems. A long-run relationship flowing from finance to growth in both Islamic and conventional finance models has been observed in our study. Furthermore, the findings recommend that strong financial intermediation plays an imperative role in driving economic growth by both financial sectors. The presence of a higher degree of Islamic financial assets in the economy contributes towards economic growth in the short-run. The results show that asset quality possibly plays an important intervening role in the overall finance-growth nexus.

The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic is not limited to human lives and health sectors. It has also changed social and economic aspects of the world. This study investigated the Islamic stock market’s reaction and changes in volatility before and during this pandemic. The market model of event study methodology was employed to analyze Islamic stock market reactions in nine different markets around the globe. To examine changes in volatility and persistence of risk, the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) method was used. Nine Islamic stock indices were selected for this study from the Thomson Reuters data stream. The results suggest that, in the short run, the Islamic Australian stock index and Islamic GCC stock index remained stable for the first 15 days following news of the pandemic. The Islamic stock indexes of Qatar, UAE, ASEAN, MENA, MENASA, and Bahrain were significantly affected by the outbreak in the short-term. On the other hand, the volatility of Islamic stock indices was substantially amplified after the global health crisis was declared by the WHO. Moreover, volatility shocks tended to persist for a longer period after COVID-19.