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Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of companies is influenced by the barriers and opportunities created by three factors characterising a country’s governance landscape: democracy, political stability and regulatory quality. Additionally, this study separately explains the influence of the three country governance factors on the ESG performance of companies and how they are affected by the profitability of the company. Design/methodology/approach Fixed effects multiple linear regression is performed on 6,035 firm-year observations drawn from 27 countries relating to 1,207 unique constituents of the S&P Global 1200 index for a five-year period from 2015 to 2019. Clustered standard errors robust to heteroscedasticity and serial correlation are estimated for a specification that includes Refinitiv ESG scores as the dependent variable, selected Worldwide Governance Indicators as the independent variables and several country- and firm-level controls. Findings The study finds that companies’ ESG performance is higher in countries with a lower level of democracy and political stability, and corporate governance performance is higher in countries with higher regulatory quality. A component-level analysis finds significant variation in the results across the different ESG pillars. Firm profitability moderates the relationship between country-level governance factors and companies’ ESG performance. Practical implications The study reveals that national governments can prompt companies to enhance their governance performance, invariably leading to greater engagement in sustainability by improving their regulatory environment and enforcement mechanisms. Thus, the implementation of regulations targeting corporate environmental and social performance is not always needed to prompt better corporate ESG performance. Social implications This study shows that internationalised companies proactively work towards achieving sustainability in countries where the country governance landscape is ineffective and inadequate to enable it. Originality/value This study addresses the association between country-level governance and firm-level ESG performance, in contrast to firm-level corporate social responsibility disclosure that has been the focus of prior research. As disclosures can be symbolic and may not reflect actual ESG performance, the results of prior studies examining the relationship between country-level governance performance and corporate social responsibility disclosure is inappropriate to explain the factors affecting the ESG performance of companies.

Mauritius stands as one of the few countries in the world to have controlled the current pandemic, the novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) to a significant extent in a relatively short lapse of time. Owing to uncertainties and crisis amid the pandemic, as an emergency announcement, the World Health Organization (WHO) solicits the help of health authorities, especially, researchers to conduct in-depth research on the evolution and treatment of COVID-19. This paper proposes an integer-valued time series model to analyze the series of COVID-19 cases in Mauritius wherein the corresponding innovation term accommodates for covariate specification. In this setup , sanitary curfew followed by sanitization and sensitization campaigns, time factor and safe shopping guidelines have been tested as the most significant variables, unlike climatic conditions. The over-dispersion estimates and the serial auto-correlation parameter are also statistically significant. This study also confirms the presence of some unobservable effects like the pathological genesis of the novel coronavirus and environmental factors which contribute to rapid propagation of the zoonotic virus in the community. Based on the proposed COM-Poisson mixture models, we could predict the number of COVID-19 cases in Mauritius. The forecasting results provide satisfactory mean squared errors. Such findings will subsequently encourage the policymakers to implement strict precautionary measures in terms of constant upgrading of the current health care and wellness system and re-enforcement of sanitary obligations.

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Purpose Undeniably, the growing influence of technology has had a significant impact on the reading process of undergraduate students and it is thus of priority interest now to understand the factors influencing independent and digital reading. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach In total, 231 questionnaires were administered among undergraduates at the University of Mauritius. A factor analysis was carried out and it was revealed that the attitude toward reading was mainly influenced by six aspects termed “Entertaining and Important,” “Lack of Interest,” “Convenience of Digital Reading,” “Utilitarian Purposes,” “Difficult Access to Reading Materials” and the “Compulsory Aspect.” This paper focuses also on determinants which could influence the behavior of undergraduates toward independent reading. In this sense, a binary logistic regression was performed. Findings Factors such as gender, the motivation to read and the time spent reading for academic purposes were found to be significant predictors. Also, given the impact of technology on the lifestyle, it was important to determine whether the respondents had adopted digital reading over printed reading by taking into consideration their preferred reading format. This query was taken care by a multinomial regression analysis where gender, faculty belonging and internet connection on mobile were found to influence the preferred method of reading by undergraduates. Originality/value The objectives are to analyze the reading habits and attitude of the undergraduates toward reading, evaluate factors which influence a student to engage in independent reading, determine factors that are likely to encourage students to prefer digital reading given the innovation in the e-reading field and to explore a possible relationship between independent reading and digital reading.

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We consider models for count variables with a GARCH-type structure. Such a process consists of an integer-valued component and a volatility process. Using arguments for contractive Markov chains we prove that this bivariate process has a unique stationary regime. Furthermore, we show absolute regularity (β-mixing) with geometrically decaying coefficients for the count process. These probabilistic results are complemented by a statistical analysis and a few simulations.

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