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The study aims to assess the interplay between financial globalization, effective governance and economic growth in sub-Saharan African (SSA) economies.

This study uses the Generalized Method of Moment Estimation and the Panel Quantile Regression techniques to analyze how financial globalization and governance impact sub-Saharan African economies.

The results show that governance is vital to the region's economic development. In order to achieve significant growth, sub-Saharan African economies must prioritize actions that promote good governance.

The study is limited to sub-Saharan African economies.

It is crucial for the sub-Saharan Africa economies to concentrate on strengthening governance frameworks in order to realize its full economic potential because improvements in governance quality would have a favorable effect on economic growth.

The findings indicate that both capital inflows and governance dynamics are essential for fostering economic growth in SSA economies. Also, balancing globalization's benefits with effective governance is crucial for promoting sustainable growth in SSA.

This paper fills a gap in literature by using the KOF financial globalization index to assess the impact of financial globalization and governance on economic growth in sub-Saharan African economies.

This paper examines the relationship between a prime contractor's financial health and its mergers and acquisitions (M&A) spending in the defense industry. It aims to provide models that give the United States Department of Defense (DoD) indications of future M&A activity, informing decision-makers and contributing to ensuring competitive markets that benefit the consumer.

The study uses panel data regression models on 40 companies between 1985 and 2021. The company's financial health is assessed using industry-standard financial ratios (i.e. measures of profitability, efficiency, solvency and liquidity) while controlling for economic factors such as national productivity, defense budgets and firm size.

The results show a significant relationship between efficiency and M&A spending, indicating that companies with lower efficiency tend to spend more on M&As. However, there was no significant relationship between M&A spending and a company's profitability or solvency. These results were consistent with previous research and the study's hypotheses for profitability and solvency. However, the effect of liquidity was the opposite of the expected result, possibly due to the defense industry's different view on liquidity compared to previous research.

The paper provides insights into the relationship between a prime contractor's financial health and its M&A spending, a topic with limited research. The findings can inform policymakers and regulators on the industrial base's future M&A activity, ensuring competitive markets that benefit the consumer.

Comparative analyses in education science have traditionally focused on the category of geographic location as the comparative unit. However, comparison may involve many other units of analysis, such as culture, politics, curricula, education systems, social phenomena, and other categories of the lives of societies. Still, categories are inseparably linked to one or several geographic locations. Comparative approaches are often also dictated by the availability heuristic. Studying geographic units as the foci of comparative research is a necessary step for comparative presentation of the topic. According to Bray and Thomas, a researcher must always seek preliminary insight in the geographic unit to be analyzed before making the comparison. In social science research, a unit of analysis relates to the main object of the research, as it answers the question of “who” or “what” is going to be analyzed. The most common units of analysis are people, groups, organizations, artifacts or phenomena, and social interactions. Ragin and Amoroso have noted that comparative methods can be used to explain the commonness or diversity of results. This paper shows how comparative research can be approached in ways that have not been discussed, grounded in the historically variable understanding of the very term “comparison.” They are, for example, The Ogden-Richards triangle, The Porphyrian Tree, Classification strategies – Mill’s Canons, The chaos of the world – the order of science, Weber’s ideal types, Raymond Boudon’s formula, and the Möbius strip in comparativism.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between company reputation and dividend policy.

In this study, sample of 98,809 firm-year observations from 22 countries covering 2005–2016 were used.

Firm reputation concerns are associated with higher propensities to pay dividends and payout ratios. Further, this positive effect is more pronounced for firms with high free cash flows, high information asymmetry and low institutional monitoring. The results are robust to an instrumental variable approach, propensity score matching and the Heckman two-stage correction approach while addressing endogeneity concerns.

These findings have significant implications for various stakeholders, such as existing and potential investors, managers, policymakers and regulators, by providing insights into the relationship between corporate reputation and firm dividend payout decisions. Corporate reputation is highlighted as crucial for accessing finance, emphasizing the role of national regulators and policymakers in facilitating firms' efforts to improve their reputation. The study highlights the dynamics of corporate reputation and dividend payout, calling for proactive engagement from regulators and policymakers. Crafting policies conducive to reputation-building can enhance firms' financial prospects, indicating the need for strategic interventions at managerial, regulatory and policy levels. Understanding the influence of economic context is crucial for firms to tailor reputation management strategies and optimize funding opportunities in different economic environments.

Overall, results suggest that reputation serves as a disciplining mechanism, where firms will pay dividends to maintain their reputations.

We model the relation between excess returns, fund size and industry size for active equity funds.

We study and contrast four markets – global equities, emerging markets, Australia core and Australia small caps – and use the results to investigate the extent to which funds deviate from estimated capacity.

We uncover a significantly negative relation between returns and both fund size and industry size across all markets. The estimated percentage of funds operating above versus below capacity varies both across markets and over time, as does the role played by fund size versus industry size. We find a greater prevalence of funds operating significantly below than above capacity, in contrast to findings for US equity mutual funds. Significant deviations from estimated capacity persist for a median of between two and six quarters.

Our main contribution is to show that the dynamics governing deviations from capacity for active equity funds vary across markets.

The aim of the chapter is to clarify the importance of culture and tourism in the economy of Slovakia in the context of social and economic changes in recent years. Culture as a part of every society, an element that defines, unites, and at the same time divides, today undoubtedly belongs to the economic activity of the country with its material outputs. In the last two decades, the share of culture and creative industry in gross domestic product (GDP) has been growing both in the entire Union and in Slovakia. Despite the fact that Slovakia has a huge cultural capital that can be transformed into cultural output, this area is often outside the interest of policymakers. However, culture is a catalyst for economic growth, a tool for regional development, a source of employment, and a contributor to social inclusion. Together with tourism, they represent a significant potential for regional development in Slovakia.

The automotive industry in Slovakia underwent a steep development pathway during the last 20 years, mostly thanks to the inflow of foreign direct investments, resulting in increasing production outputs, exports, and employment. In this chapter, we highlight the limits of this growth, pointing out on production function of the industry heavily based on foreign capital. Under the current challenges of production digitalization, automatization, and car electrification, the position of the country seems uncertain. As a response, the government of Slovakia, but also others in the region, embarked on supporting new wave of foreign direct investments mostly in battery production and in the case of Slovakia also attracting a fifth car manufacturer. We conclude that this strategy fixes the current dependency on foreign capital and know-how rather than allows for upgrading.

The globalized economic environment is a reality of our time, and the free market is an organic part of it. In the European Union, the free market is one of the key pillars of its functioning. The free movement of labor, capital, goods, and services contributes to long-term and stabilized economic and social development. When monitoring and analyzing the free market, the labor market deserves special attention. The information provided reflects Slovakia's labor market for 2000–2020, in which the country was undergoing significant social and economic changes. It was joining the European Union and the euro area. Many privatization projects continued, as well as modernization and building of new business capacities. However, their successful use required new sources of labor and a new labor market organization. Therefore, in this chapter, we provide information about the status of the labor market in the context of economic development. We also point out the level of unemployment in relation to the structure of the labor force. The chapter aims to provide principal information about changes in the labor market in Slovakia and its determinants from the external environment.

Large regional differences in Slovakia existed already at the beginning of the 20th century, which resulted in emigration mainly from the east of the territory. The subsequent popularity of the communist regime is explained by a successful reduction in the regional disparities and increased well-being of the inhabitants. The transformation since 1990 ignored important regional differences among the Czech and Slovak regions and this led to the disintegration of Czechoslovakia. Governance structures in Slovakia remained centralized. This harmed the welfare – weaker economic performance of the regions and worse results of the labor market. The underutilization of the economic potential of regions has consequently slowed down the catching up at the national level. Slovakia thus so far missed the opportunity to use transfers from the European Union more productively. In recent years, however, there has been some progress in changing the unsatisfactory model of public governance to a more modern one, with much greater decision-making and financial autonomy for the regions.