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This study aims to examine the link between boards and audit committees and firm performance in Kuwaiti listed firms in the context of recent and extensive corporate governance regulatory reform.

Panel data regression analysis with fixed effects and clustered standard errors of firm performance for 61–97 listed industrial and services firms in Kuwait over a seven-year period. The dependent variables are the returns on assets and equity, the debt-to-equity ratio and leverage and Tobin’s Q and the independent variables comprise board of directors and audit committee characteristics, including size, the number of meetings and the numbers of independent and outside board and expert committee members. Firm size, subsidiary status and cash flow serve as control variables.

Mixed results with respect to the characteristics of the board of directors. Board size and independent and outsider board members positively relate only to Tobin’s Q and insiders only to debt to equity. For audit committee characteristics, committee size, independence and expertise positively relate to the return on equity and committee size and expertise only to Tobin’s Q. Of the five performance measures considered, board and audit committee characteristics together best determine Tobin’s Q.

Data from a single country limits generalisability and control variables necessarily limited in a developing market context. Need for qualitative insights into corporate governance reform as a complement to conventional quantitative analysis. In combining accounting and market information, Tobin’s Q appears best able to recognise the performance benefits of good corporate governance in terms of internal organisational change.

The recent corporate governance code and guidelines reforms exert a mixed impact on firm performance, with audit committees, not boards, of most influence. But recent reforms implied most change to boards of directors. One suggestion is that non-market reform may have been unneeded given existing market pressure on listed firms and firms anticipating regulatory change.

Kuwait’s corporate governance reforms codified corporate governance practices already in place among many of its firms in pursuit of organisational legitimacy, and while invoking substantial change to audit committees, involved minor change to firm performance, at least in the short term. Some firms may also have delisted in expectation of stronger corporate governance requirements. Regardless, these direct and indirect processes both improved the overall quality of listed firm corporate governance and performance in Kuwait.

Seminal analysis of corporate governance reforms in Kuwait, which have rapidly progressed from no corporate governance code and guidelines to an initially voluntary and then compulsory regime. Only known analysis to incorporate both board of directors and audit committee characteristics. Reveals studies of the corporate governance–firm performance relationship may face difficulty in model specification, and empirical significance, given the complexity of corporate governance codes and guidelines, leads in changing firm behaviour and self-selection of firms into and out of regulated markets.

Earlier studies used conventional time-series models to forecast the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on stock market performance. This study aims to provide a more flexible model that offers more robust estimation features, such as incorporating additional information (prior) about the model parameters, capturing the evolving behavior of the parameters over time and being able to include several covariates using a spike and slab prior, within the context of the Covid-19 shock and its effect on stock market performance.

Empirically, this paper compares autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models and the proposed Bayesian structural time-series (BSTS) models regarding their forecasting accuracy for airline and petroleum stocks in the five countries most affected by the Coronavirus, namely, Brazil, France, India, Russia and the USA. In addition, the authors estimate the difference between the pre- and post-intervention periods of the observed series of stock prices and a simulated time-series that would have occurred without the extreme event of Covid-19, using intervention analysis under the best-performing models.

The forecasting results, based on the trend, seasonality and regression components, demonstrate that BSTS models respond faster to the diverse needs of time-series analysis in unprecedented and crisis conditions compared to ARIMA models. Therefore, the authors use intervention analysis under BSTS models to examine the impact of Covid-19 intervention on stock market performance. The authors find that the Covid-19 shock had an adverse effect on the stock markets of the selected countries. The impact was more pronounced in the Brazilian market, where the average weekly prices of airline and petroleum stocks plummeted by 76% and 29%, respectively.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no prior study has carried out intervention analysis under BSTS models to forecast the impact of Covid-19 intervention on stock market returns. This study attempts to fill this methodological gap in the literature.

The study aims to identify a model of commercializing entrepreneurial ideas in information and communication technology (ICT) knowledge-based companies.

A mixed method has been used in the research. The participants of the qualitative part were 15 key informants selected by sampling method purposefully and theoretically, while a sample of 205 experts was randomly chosen for the quantitative part. Data collection was completed through a semistructured interview in the qualitative part and by a researcher-made questionnaire in the quantitative part. The reliability of the research was confirmed by Cronbach’s alpha. The validity of the qualitative and quantitative parts was approved, respectively, by the criteria of Corbin and Strauss (2008) and by the content validity. Data analysis was done in the qualitative part through open, axial and selective coding, while in the quantitative part through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference systems (ANFIS).

The commercialization model of ICT entrepreneurial ideas was depicted by the paradigmatic version of Corbin and Strauss (2008). The model has been consisted of six sectors as follows: causal conditions (including stimuli of science and technology parks, interests and motivation of managers of ICT knowledge-based company and environmental stimuli), contextual conditions (including skills and abilities of managers of ICT knowledge-based company, status of ICT knowledge-based company and enabling and facilitating legal framework), intervening conditions (including the complex nature of the ICT industry, science and technology parks’ support of companies, facilities and equipment for commercialization of ICT entrepreneurial ideas and economic system stability), strategies (including marketing research, planning and feasibility study of ICT entrepreneurial idea, design and production of ICT product and release and supply of ICT product), consequences (successful commercialization of ICT entrepreneurial ideas in the post-COVID-19 era) and the central phenomenon (ICT entrepreneurial ideas: commercialization in the post-COVID-19 era). Then, the main factors were confirmed through PLS-SEM and ANFIS. Among the factors, interests and motivation of managers of ICT knowledge-based companies, status of ICT knowledge-based companies, facilities and equipment for commercialization of ICT entrepreneurial ideas and release and supply of ICT products were identified as the most influential factors.

The model can help solve the challenges of managers and policymakers to commercialize ICT entrepreneurial ideas. Therefore, innovative production will increase, value will be created for the beneficiaries and economic, social and political growth will occur in the post-Corona era.

Commercialization of ICT entrepreneurial ideas has the potential to affect many aspects of economic and societal activities in the society such as GDP growth, employment, productivity, poverty alleviation, quality of life and education.

The research includes innovation in presenting a multidimensional commercialization model based on an entrepreneurial perspective in the special field of ICT with a mixed approach including grounded theory, PLS-SEM and ANFIS in ICT knowledge-based companies. But the most important innovation of the study is related to the findings. The main categories, subcategories and concepts of the research have been presented in the form of a theory entitled “ICT entrepreneurial ideas: commercialization in the post-COVID-19 era.”

The increased capital requirements and the implementation of new liquidity standards under Basel III sparked various concerns among researchers, academics and other stakeholders. The question is whether Basel III regulation is ideal, that is, adequate to deal with a crisis, such as the 2007–2009 global financial crisis? The purpose of this paper is threefold: First, perform a stress testing exercise on the US banking sector, while examining liquidity and solvency risk indicators jointly under the Basel III regulatory framework. Second, allow the study to cover the post-crisis period, while referring to key Basel III regulatory requirements. And third, focus on the resilience of domestic systemically important banks (D-SIBs), which are supposed to support the US financial system in times of stress and therefore whose failure causes the entire financial system to fail.

The authors used a sample of the 24 largest US banks observed over the period Q1-2015 to Q1-2021 and a scenario-based vector autoregressive conditional forecasting approach.

The authors found that the model successfully produces accurate forecasts and simulates the responses of the solvency and liquidity indicators to different real and historical macroeconomic shocks. The authors also found that the US banking sector is resilient and can withstand both historical and hypothetical macroeconomic shocks because of its compliance with the Basel III capital and liquidity regulations, which consist of encouraging banks to hold high-quality liquid assets and stable funding resources and to strengthen their capital, which absorbs the losses incurred in a crisis.

The authors developed a framework for testing the resilience of the US banking sector under macroeconomic shocks, while examining liquidity and solvency risk indicators jointly under Basel III regulatory framework, a point not yet well studied elsewhere, and most studies on this subject are based on precrisis data. The authors also focused on the resilience of D-SIBs, whose failure causes the failure of the entire financial system, which previous studies have failed to examine.

This study proposes a novel method utilising a speech-word pair bipartite network to examine the correlation structure between members of parliament (MPs) in the context of the UK- China relationship.

We construct MP-word pair bipartite networks based on the co-occurrence relationship between MPs and words in their speech content. These networks are then mapped into monopartite MPs correlation networks. Additionally, the study calculates correlation network indicators and identifies MP communities and factions to determine the characteristics of MPs and their interrelation in the UK-China relationship. This includes insights into the distribution of key MPs, their correlation structure and the evolution and development trends of MP factions.

Analysis of the parliamentary speeches on China-related affairs in the British Parliament from 2011 to 2020 reveals that the distribution and interrelationship of MPs engaged in UK-China affairs are centralised and discrete, with a few core MPs playing an integral role in the UK-China relationship. Among them, MPs such as Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, David Cameron, Lord Hunt of Chesterton and Lord Howell of Guildford formed factions with significant differences; however, the continuity of their evolution exhibits unstableness. The core MP factions, such as those led by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon and David Cameron, have achieved a level of maturity and exert significant influence.

The research has several limitations that warrant acknowledgement. First, we mapped the MP-word pair bipartite network into the MP correlation network for analysis without directly analysing the structure of MPs based on the bipartite network. In future studies, we aim to explore various types of analysis based on the proposed bipartite networks to provide more comprehensive and accurate references for studying UK-China relations. In addition, we seek to incorporate semantic-level analyses, such as sentiment analysis of MPs, into the MP-word -pair bipartite networks for in-depth analysis. Second, the interpretations of MP structures in the UK-China relationship in this study are limited. Consequently, expertise in UK-China relations should be incorporated to enhance the study and provide more practical recommendations.

Firstly, the findings can contribute to an objective understanding of the characteristics and connotations of UK-China relations, thereby informing adjustments of focus accordingly. The identification of the main factions in the UK-China relationship emphasises the imperative for governments to pay greater attention to these MPs’ speeches and social relationships. Secondly, examining the evolution and development of MP factions aids in identifying a country’s diplomatic focus during different periods. This can assist governments in responding promptly to relevant issues and contribute to the formulation of effective foreign policies.

First, this study expands the research methodology of parliamentary debates analysis in previous studies. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to study the UK-China relationship through the MP-word-pair bipartite network. This outcome inspires future researchers to apply various knowledge networks in the LIS field to elucidate deeper characteristics and connotations of UK-China relations. Second, this study provides a novel perspective for UK-China relationship analysis, which deepens the research object from keywords to MPs. This finding may offer important implications for researchers to further study the role of MPs in the UK-China relationship.

This study proposes a novel scheme for analysing the correlation structure between MPs based on bipartite networks. This approach offers insights into the development and evolving dynamics of MPs.