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Environmental sustainability is a major concern of contemporary societies, businesses, and governments. However, there is a lack of knowledge as to how countries can achieve the goal to end poverty, whilst protecting the planet. It is the objective of our study to examine the moderating role of institutional quality on the financial development and environmental quality nexus in South Asia. Our sample consists of panel data of five South Asian countries (India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan) from 1984 to 2018. We find that financial development increases CO2 emissions in this region, implying that countries in South Asia have utilized financial development for capitalization, instead of improving production technology. Institutional quality moderates the negative impact of financial development on environmental sustainability. An implication of our findings is that efforts to improve institutional quality may help to promote sustainable development in South Asia.

We investigate the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate governance on stock price crash risk in manufacturing sector of India and Pakistan. We collect data of nine years from 2010 to 2018 from DataStream of 353 manufacturing firms. We apply the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to the analysis of the data. We find that when firms actively engage in CSR activities, they lead to reduced stock price crash risk. We further find that managerial ownership has a significant positive impact on stock price crash risk, while board size and CEO duality show a significant and negative impact on stock price crash risk.

PurposeThe authors examine the impact of credit, liquidity and operational risks on the financial performance of commercial banks of South Asia.Design/methodology/approachData are extracted from DataStream of 76 commercial banks of four countries, i.e. Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka for the period 2009–2018. The generalized method of moments (GMM) is used to analyze the results.FindingsAll three risks are significantly associated with financial performance. The authors find that Z-score positively affects the bank performance, whereas the nonperforming loans (NPLs) ratio has a negative impact on financial performance of bank. Liquidity risk analyses show the current and loan-to-deposit (LTD) ratios positively and negatively, respectively, affect financial performance. While operational risk positively affects financial performance. The authors further present the significant effects of joint occurrence of credit and liquidity risks on financial performance.Practical implicationsFor managing credit risk, banking management should ensure the policies for granting loans and timely reimbursement of the loan installments from customers. Bank managers should regularly monitor the liquidity position by maintaining the necessary levels of loans and deposits. Management should retain a healthy capital charge to meet operational risks.Originality/valueCredit, liquidity and operational risks are considered the most important categories of risk which are faced by financial institutions. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study which investigates the impact of these risks on banks’ financial performance in selected South Asian countries. The results of this study have relevance and probable generalizability about the impact of risks on the performance of banks in emerging markets.

Purpose Ownership structure deals with internal corporate governance mechanism, which plays important role in minimizing conflict of interests between shareholders and management Ownership structure is an important mechanism that influences the value of firm, financing and dividend decisions. This paper aims to examine the impact of the ownership structures, i.e. managerial ownership, institutional ownership on financing and dividend policy. Design/methodology/approach The authors use panel data of manufacturing firms from both developed and developing countries, and the generalized method of moments (GMM) is applied to analyze the results. The authors collect the data from DataStream for the period of 2010 to 2019. Findings The authors find that managerial ownership and ownership concentration have significant and positive effects on debt financing, but they have significant and negative effects on dividend policy. Institutional ownership shows a positive impact on financing decisions and dividend policy for sample firms. Originality/value This study fills the gap by proving the policy implications for both firms and investors, as managers prefer debt financing, but at the same time try to ignore dividend payment. Therefore, investors may not invest in firms with a higher proportion of managerial ownership and may choose to invest more in institutional ownership, which lowers the agency cost.

The determinants of innovation output in empirical literature were extensively investigated by considering diverse sets of variables. Still, the impact of economic policy uncertainty on innovation output is yet to unleash. To mitigate the existing research gap, the study investigated the association between EPU and innovation output, considering a panel of 22 countries over 1997–2018. The study employed a dynamic panel quantile regression and system-GMM specification causality test for discovering elasticity and directional association both in the long-run and the short-run. Study findings disclosed negative statistically significant effects running from EPU to innovation output except innovation measured by R&D. Moreover, institutional quality and FDI exposed positive and statistically significant association with innovation output. In terms of directional causality, unidirectional causality running from EPU and FDI to innovation output was established, whereas bidirectional causality was established between institutional quality and innovation output.

PurposeEconomic risk plays a vital role in firm's cash holdings. We aim to determine the impact of economic risk on the firm's cash holdings.Design/methodology/approachThe data is collected from the DataStream from 2002 to 2018, which covers 552 listed firms in the manufacturing sector of Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh. We apply a two-step dynamic panel estimation to analyze the results.FindingsWe use the variance of inflation and variance of interest rate as proxies of economic risk. Our results show that variance of inflation has a significant and negative effect while the variance of interest rate has a significant and positive effect on firms' cash holdings in selected countries. Furthermore, we find economic risk negatively affects the firm's cash holdings in the country-wise analysis. Firms should maintain a reasonable amount of cash reserves to handle uncertain situations.Originality/valueThis study may provide insights to financial decision-makers of a firm for better cash management according the economic conditions of the country.

The implementation of an effective risk management policy is necessary for the survival and success of banks. Ownership structure changes the risk-taking behavior of banks. Therefore, we analyze the impact of the ownership structure on risk-taking behavior of banks in emerging markets (i.e., Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh). We take public, private and foreign ownership of banks in this study. We collect the data from 64 banks of selected countries from 2011 to 2018. We measure risk-taking as capital adequacy, leverage coverage ratio, non-performing loan ratio, and return volatility. We use two-step system dynamic panel estimation for analyzing the results. We find that public and private banks have significant relationship with the risk-taking of banks. Furthermore, public and private banks show more risk-taking behavior as compared to foreign banks in all selected countries.