Women’s advancement and consequential gender equality have significant implications for human capital formation, increase in labour productivity, employment creation, poverty reduction, and overall socio-economic and human development. So, inclusive growth and sustainable development would not be possible without women’s empowerment and gender equality. Thus, targeting women’s empowerment is extensively relevant for Asian countries. In this context, this article explored the impact of the gender factors on the economic growth of 30 Asian economies over the period from 1997 to 2015 by using panel autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) model. It provides the evidence of an overall positive impact of the gender parity index of health, education, employment and democratic representation on the economic growth of Asia in the long run. Therefore, gender equality is an important determinant of economic growth in Asian countries, and hence, should be on board while planning for the empowerment of women.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the cross-impact of leverage and performance for firms operating in the developed and frontier bank-based economies. Design/methodology/approach This study uses annual panel data for a sample of 400 firms over a period of 27 years from 1990 to 2016. The sample sample firms consist of developed, Germany, France and Japan, and frontier including Argentina and Sri Lanka bank-based economies firms. The authors employ a simultaneous equation modeling consisting of two equations estimated using the two-stage least squares procedure to examine the cross-relationships between leverage and performance after controlling for other firm-level variables like size, growth and liquidity. Findings The empirical results are presented in two sets. First, in the case of firms in the developed bank-based sample, the authors find a negative debt-to-performance relationship and a negative performance-to-debt relationship. This inconsistent negative debt–performance relationship implies that firms operating in these economies use debt beyond a threshold limit, which, in turn, increases agency issues between the managers and debt-holders, thereby influencing firm performance adversely. Second, for frontier economies firms, the authors find a positive debt-to-performance relationship in line with the “trade-off theory.” Furthermore, the authors find a negative performance-to-debt relationship for both sub-samples in line with the “pecking-order theory.” Originality/value The study is distinct from earlier empirical studies and contributes largely to the existing literature. First, it emphasizes whether financial leverage influences firm performance in bank-based economies as firms operating in such systems are exposed directly to the strict regulatory environment. Second, it investigates whether any reverse relationship emanating from firm performance to capital structure holds for firms of these countries. This issue, to the best of author knowledge, is unanswered in previous research, more specifically for developed and frontier bank-based economies. Moreover, the results are relevant, as firm managers, analysts and policymakers must consider the importance of such cross-debt-performance relationships, while determining the optimal capital structure, in the bank-based economies.

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This paper aims at identifying relevant financial factors which critically affects firm revenue growth. We specifically focus on the dynamic nature of such factors across up or down-market cycles and also for different scales and size of business. The study uses annual data of 17 accounting and financial variables for a sample of 1,450 Indian firms which exist continuously between 2003 and 2014 and generate a framework for identification of critical factors which affect firm revenue growth. We employ a variable reduction technique via principal component analysis (PCA), and then use the "principal factors" identified thereon, in a logistic regression approach to develop such a framework. The study finds efficiency in management of current assets and capital (both short-and long-term) to be the most critical factors, determining the firm revenue growth in Indian context. The relative importance of capital deployment efficiency is more for small firms than for large firms whereas asset management efficiency is the most critical factor in larger firms. Long-term solvency supersedes all other factors during market downturns. These findings may have important implications for firms and its stakeholders as a priori knowledge on the importance of critical factors regarding firm's revenue growth could enable the mangers to support them in their decision-making process.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the causal relationship between economic development and financial sector development for 28 countries at different stages of their development. The authors specifically focus on the nature of causality during economic boom and tranquil cycles. Design/methodology/approach The study uses quarterly time series panels of 17 developed and 11 emerging countries, during 1993Q1-2014Q4 with each having three sub-panels – full sample, a period of the economic uptrend (UP), and period of the economic downtrend. The authors use a univariate analysis for initial screening followed by panel unit root test, panel co-integration and causality test proposed by Toda–Yamamoto to examine the causal relationship. Findings The principal results suggest that for developed economies, there is a causal flow from financial sector to real sector in line with the “supply-leading” hypothesis, whereas for emerging economies, it is from real sector to financial sector, in line with the “demand-following” hypothesis. This overall relationship is strong for both emerging and developed economies during economic boom or UP cycles, but becomes weak during economic downturns or tranquil periods. Originality/value This study is different from previous studies on this issue and contributes to the existing literature in a number of ways. First, the focus of this paper revolves around identification of differential patterns in causal flows between real and financial sectors for different economies, across different economic cycles. Second, to present a robust representation of financial sector, the authors consider both banking sector and stock market parameters as the proxy for financial sector development. Third, the authors address the “stock-flow problem” in the measurement of financial variables a typical criticism of some of the previous studies. Finally, the authors use a rich sample size comprising of about 2,500 quarterly observations for each variable, with about 1,500 observations from developed and 1,000 from emerging economies.