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This study aims to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) tools influence the academic success and adaptation of international students in higher education. It examines the benefits, challenges and ethical considerations including academic integrity of integrating AI in learning environments.

An exploratory qualitative research approach was employed, utilising semi-structured interviews with postgraduate international students from diverse backgrounds.

The findings suggest that AI tools enhance academic performance by offering personalised learning, immediate feedback and efficient assessment. However, concerns about ethical use, over-reliance and the potential impact on critical thinking and academic integrity were prominent in the contexts of assessments and learning experiences.

The research offers unique insights by focusing on postgraduate international students, an often-underrepresented group in AI education studies. Their distinctive challenges, including adapting to new academic environments and overcoming language barriers, make them a particularly valuable sample for understanding the role of AI in higher education. This focus allows the study to contribute new perspectives on how generative AI (GenAI) tools like Grammarly and ChatGPT facilitate academic performance improvement, especially in enhancing writing proficiency and managing academic expectations. These findings extend the discussion by specifically addressing the experiences of international students in postgraduate studies, a demographic where AI’s impact has been less explored.

Purpose: This study focuses on the business case of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), namely its economic benefits and long-term value creation by attracting environmental-friendly and socially responsible investors.

Methodology: The central result of the von Neumann–Morgenstern (VNM) expected utility theory is that the optimal strategy under uncertainty is given by maximising the expected utility. The study introduces a second utility function to represent externalities. Total utility can be derived by a sum of the two functions where h is a scalar value which indicates to what degree the actor is interested in maximising the utility of externalities. The payouts could be set by ESG scores for the given companies, then the whole equation can be solved for simple cases such as the normal case.

Findings: By extending the traditional risk/return MPT framework to account for the additional utility of contributing towards externalities (in this case specifically ESG goals) the utility maximisation algorithm can be applied to the ESG dimension in a holistic manner and not as a separate filter on the investment universe nor a synthetic boost to expected returns.

Implications: Portfolio and asset managers can more efficiently optimise for consumer risk, return and sustainability preferences, allowing access to the widest possible investment universe while at the same time delivering an optimal bespoke solution for the specific sustainability preferences of the investors.

Future research: How to measure investment’s sustainability impact and what is the best way to estimate that. How to determine monetary impact of damages and externalities. Estimation of Hamilton’s coefficient.

A recent literature has documented the real effect of Trade Policy Uncertainty (TPU) on trade, stock markets and unemployment; however, there is no specific study that has examined how trade uncertainty influences banking sector stability. In this quest, this study aims to bridge this gap by examining the impact of TPU in the USA and China on the stability of the Indian banking sector. Additionally, the study aims to assess the moderating influence of banking regulation and supervision on the aforementioned relationship.

To quantify the above objectives, the study uses a robust set of econometric estimates, i.e. system generalised method of moments (Sys-GMM), fixed effect model and pair-wise Granger causality test on the alternative proxies of banking stability from 2000 to 2023.

The empirical estimates validate that TPU has a negative impact on the Indian banking stability. Moreover, the impact of the USA. TPU is much more significant on the Indian banking sector’s stability in comparison to the Chinese TPU. The empirical model further suggests that banking regulation and supervision moderate the negative influence of trade uncertainties on the Indian banking sector’s stability and assist in improving it. Finally, the pairwise causality test confirms a unidirectional causal relationship between the TPU in the USA and China and the stability of the Indian banking sector, thereby validating the transmission effect of trade uncertainty on this sector.

To the best of the author’s study, this study is original and offers useful policy recommendations for understanding the implications of trade uncertainty for banking stability. The study also offers insight to comprehend the role of banking regulation and compliance in mitigating the adverse repercussion of trade uncertainties on the banking sector’s stability.

This paper aims to investigate the sentiment connectedness among 10 European stock markets between January 2020 and July 2022, associating such connectedness with the level of the geopolitical risk index.

For this purpose, a time-varying parameter vector autoregressive connectedness framework is used.

Results show a high degree of sentiment connectedness. Overall, the sentiments of Portugal, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany and Italy are net transmitters of shocks while those of Poland, Sweden, Norway and Romania are net receivers. Additional evidence indicates that when geopolitical risks increase, the sentiment connectedness tends to decrease. However, the reverse holds under extremely high levels of geopolitical risks.

Overall, this study provides some significant contributions to the literature. First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first few studies to examine the dynamic connectedness among stock market sentiment across countries. This issue needs special consideration for European countries because of their close geographical distance and strong integration due to the European Union’s co-development strategies. Second, the association of sentiment connectedness with geopolitical risk is examined for the first time. This is even more meaningful in the context of growing geopolitical risks stemming from the Ukraine war, which could affect international financial markets.

This scoping review mapped the extant literature on parents with a justice-involved youth and their attitudes and perceptions toward police. The study aimed to explore two research questions: (1) How do perceptions between parent and youth correspond? and (2) What factors affect the parental perception of police?

A total of 14 studies were identified and analyzed. The review focused on understanding the relationship between parental and youth perceptions of police, as well as identifying factors that influence parental attitudes.

In short, parents’ perception of police strongly corresponds to that of youths’ perception of police and parents with negative views of the police significantly impact how their children perceive law enforcement. Parental perceptions were found to be influenced by demographic, interpersonal and contextual factors. Notably, police officers’ communicative skills, transparency and ability to interact with parents of justice-involved youth without stigmatizing them were critical in shaping positive perceptions.

The findings are based on a geographically limited number of studies. Future research should further explore these dynamics in different sociocultural contexts and expand the sample size for broader conclusions.

The study underscores the importance of police officers developing strong communication skills and engaging with parents in a manner that avoids stigmatization. Improved interactions between law enforcement and families are essential for supporting justice-involved youth.

This review highlights the role of parental attitudes in shaping youth perceptions of law enforcement that may inform police training aimed at fostering cooperation with families.

This paper aims to examine the effects of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on accounting conservatism in Korean firms. An increase in EPU could widen information asymmetry between insiders and outsiders, to the detriment of a firm’s investment decisions, stock price and cost of capital. This paper hypothesizes that Korean firms are likely to decrease accounting conservatism during high EPU due to inefficient institutional structure and weak corporate governance, together with the vulnerability of the Korean economy to exogenous shocks.

This study measures a firm’s level of conservatism using three accrual-based models proposed by Ball and Shivakumar (2006): 1) the cash flow model (CF model), 2) the Dechow and Dichev model (DD model) and 3) the Jones model. As a robustness test, this paper uses C-score model as an alternative measure of accounting conservatism. The data set used in this study is a total of 23,109 firm-year observations during the sample period from 2000 to 2018.

The test results show that an increase in EPU adversely affects Korean firms’ accounting conservatism, and that this adverse impact is more pronounced in financially distressed and non-manufacturing firms. This study’s findings highlight the importance of institutional structure during a period of high EPU, which can create incentives for either improving or deteriorating reporting quality.

This study adds new evidence to extant literature on the effects of EPU on managers’ choice of accounting policies and demonstrates that managers in emerging markets may have different incentives to cope with country-specific EPU fluctuations.

We aim to examine two issues. First, we intend to identify the best performing expected return proxies. Second, we investigate whether the expected return proxies for individual stocks can track the corresponding realized returns during extremely good or extremely bad times of the economic environment related to business conditions, stock market valuation and broad market performance.

We construct four sets of expected return proxies, including: (1) characteristic-based proxies; (2) standard risk-factor-based proxies; (3) risk-factor-based proxies that allow betas to vary with firm characteristics and (4) macroeconomic-variable-based proxies. First, we estimate expected returns for individual stocks using newly developed methods and evaluate the performance of these expected return proxies based on the minimum variance criterion of Lee et al. (2020). Second, we regress expected return proxies and realized returns on indicator variables that capture the extreme phases of the economic environment. Then we compare the estimated coefficients from these two sets of regressions and see if they are similar in magnitude via formal hypothesis testing.

We find that characteristic-based proxies and risk-factor-based proxies that allow betas to vary with firm characteristics are the two best performing proxies. Therefore, it is important to allow betas to vary with firm characteristics in constructing expected return proxies. We also find that model-based expected return proxies do a reasonably good job capturing actual returns during extremely bad and extremely good phases of business cycles measured by leading economic indicators, consumer confidence and business confidence. However, there is a large gap between the adjustment of model-based expected returns and realized returns during extreme episodes of stock market valuation or broad market performance.

We examine four types of expected return proxies and use the newly developed methodology as in Lee et al. (2020) to see which one is the best. In addition, we document whether model-based expected returns from individual stocks adjust partially or fully to keep pace with actual returns in response to changing economic conditions. No prior studies have examined these two issues.

Spirituality serves as an ethical benchmark for shaping human and brand identity. Only a few studies have recently attempted to examine the impact of spiritual attributes on customer behavior. This study extends the current literature and aims to develop a research model to investigate spiritual brand attributes toward customers’ behavior. The study employs the stimulus–organism–response (SOR) model as a theoretical signpost to construct the research model. Driven by this chapter, future research opportunities are presented, and the opportunity for empirical research is also illustrated.

This study aims to show the difference between the two types of oil price volatility resulting from either increases or decreases in oil prices and find evidence of the differential effect of oil price volatility on firms' environmental initiatives.

This paper examines how volatility in crude oil prices affect corporate environmental responsibility among US firms (excluding oil and gas producers) between 2002 and 2020, with a particular focus on the differential impact of oil price volatility.

The authors find that a one standard deviation increase in oil volatility resulting from positive changes in oil prices corresponds to a 12.7% decrease in environmental score, while the same increase in volatility from negative changes in oil prices leads to a 5.5% decrease in environmental score. Financial constraints are identified as a potential channel through which oil price volatility influences environmental activities. Specifically, a one standard deviation increase in oil volatility from positive price changes leads to an 18% decrease in environmental score for firms with high financial constraints, compared to an 8% decrease for firms with low financial constraints.

This study builds on the research of Phan et al. (2021) and Maghyereh and Abdoh (2020). Pan et al. reveal a negative association between oil price uncertainty and corporate social responsibility in the oil and gas sector, yet they overlook 1) the asymmetric impacts of oil price changes and sectoral disparities. Moreover, 2) their inclusion of a year-fixed effect undermines their findings’ reliability, as the oil price volatility variable remains constant across all firm-year observations, and including a year-fixed effect diminishes its explanatory power.

This research investigates the complex relationship between economic policy uncertainty (EPU), energy consumption and institutional factors in the Gulf region. The purpose of this study is to examine how institutional factors moderate the impact of EPU on energy consumption in Gulf countries.

This paper uses the dynamic panel autoregressive distributed lag (PARDL) method, over a period stretching from 1996 to 2021 in the Gulf countries.

The results show that, only in the long term, EPU has a positive and significant impact on energy consumption, suggesting that increased EPU leads to increased energy use. Furthermore, this study found that, only in the long term, government effectiveness and regulatory quality have positive and significant effect on energy consumption. Accordingly, the two institutional factors play a moderating role in the EPU−energy consumption nexus.

This study highlights the importance of considering the time dimension when formulating energy and economic policies in Gulf countries. Policymakers should take into consideration the nature of these relationships to make informed decisions that promote energy efficiency and economic stability in the region.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study examining the relationship between EPU and energy consumption in the Gulf countries while incorporating the role of institutional factors as potential mediators.