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This study aims to investigate the influence of chief executive officer (CEO) trustworthiness on firm investment efficiency and explores how this relationship varies in different contexts, including product market competition (PMC), institutional investors, media coverage, analyst monitoring and ownership structure.

The authors examined a sample of A-Share non-financial firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2005–2018 by using panel date regression techniques. The robustness of the findings is affirmed through alternative measures of investment efficiency and various econometric techniques. Further, various endogeneity tests are conducted to confirm that the findings are not affected by potential bias.

The authors find a significant positive effect of CEO trustworthiness on firms’ investment efficiency and exhibit that CEO trustworthiness mitigates the issue of underinvestment rather than overinvestment. Further, PMC strengthens the association between CEO trustworthiness and investment efficiency. The influence is more pronounced when institutional investors, media and analyst monitoring are low and in non state-owned firms. Likewise, financial reporting quality is found to be an underlying mechanism for the positive association between CEO trustworthiness and investment efficiency.

The reliance on a location-specific index of CEO trustworthiness may obscure its true nature, and caution is warranted when generalizing these results to other regions.

This study suggests that elevating a trustworthy CEO to the firm upper echelon can improve investment efficiency. Policymakers and investors should recognize and leverage the effect of CEO trustworthiness in firms, especially those with weaker governance structures.

This study enriches the literature about investment efficiency by introducing a novel determinant, CEO trustworthiness and establishes that it acts as an informal social institution that improves firms’ resource utilization in emerging economies with weak governing structures.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between board diversity measured as relation-oriented, task-oriented and board overall diversity and firm’s investment efficiency.

This study estimates four dimensions of board diversity, including age, gender, tenure and education. The four dimensions are further categorized in relation-oriented diversity (i.e. age and gender), task-oriented diversity (i.e. tenure and education) and overall board diversity (relation and task oriented). Panel data analysis is used to examine the board diversity–investment efficiency relationship in Chinese listed firms during the years 2003–2018. The findings of the study are robust to a battery of econometric techniques.

This study finds relation-oriented, task-oriented and overall diversity of a board curb investment inefficiency by discouraging sub-optimal investment (over- or under-investment). In other words, board diversity improves firms’ investment efficiency.

The results suggest that board diversity plays a significant role in corporate decisions. The findings illustrate that board diversity disciplines the management, reduces agency conflicts and thereby improves corporate governance, resulting in higher investment efficiency.

This study has two important contributions. First, this study extends the prior literature of investment efficiency by considering socio-psychological dimension of the board diversity by constructing relation- and task-oriented diversity. Second, contrary to earlier studies on board diversity, this study takes four facets of board diversity, i.e. age, gender, education and tenure that improve corporate governance mechanism.

This study aims to inspect the impact of Chief Executive Officers’ (CEOs) education in a “specific field,” such as CEOs with science and engineering backgrounds on firms’ innovation. Based on agency theory, this study also reports how an endogenous factor, i.e. CEOs’ compensation, and an exogenous factor such as intellectual property rights (IPR), moderate the CEOs with a scientific background (CEOSB)-innovation relationship.

This study uses a sample of Chinese nonfinancial firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2008 to 2018 by applying the ordinary least squares regression method. To deal with the endogeneity issues, this study also performs a series of additional tests.

The results indicate that the effects of CEOSB on the firm innovation activities are positive and significant. Further, this study finds that CEOs’ compensation and IPR protection positively and significantly moderate the CEOSB-innovation relationship. These outcomes are robust to a series of additional tests.

The results of this study have valuable implications for various stakeholders interested in stimulating innovation. To sum up, the results of this study inculcate these stakeholders that the enhancement of firm innovation is contingent on the appropriate selection of CEOs, effective compensation packages and IPR regulations.

Distinct from the existent studies, the focus of the study is on the perspectives of CEOs’ scientific backgrounds. Further, based on agency theory, this study also reports how CEOs’ compensation and IPR protection moderate the CEOSB-innovation relationship, which has not been tested earlier to our knowledge, especially in the context of an emerging economy like China.

This study aims to empirically explore the nexus between FinTech and a firm’s cash holdings.

A panel data regression analysis is conducted on a sample of A-listed firms registered on the Shenzhen and Shanghai Stock Exchanges from 2011 to 2019. To address simultaneity issues in the study, the authors use various endogeneity tests, including lag of independent variables, generalized method of moments and two-stage least squares estimation.

Results reveal that FinTech has a significantly negative effect on a firm’s cash holdings, suggesting that FinTech development improves cash management by alleviating agency costs and reducing financial constraints. The findings remain consistent across different FinTech measures and alternative cash holding proxies, demonstrating that FinTech serves as a corporate governance mechanism.

The findings suggest that FinTech disciplines corporate managers and alleviates agency problems regarding cash holdings.

This study suggests that FinTech determines a firm’s cash holdings.

The modern day has seen an increase in the prevalence of the improvement of high-performance thermal systems for the enhancement of heat transmission. Numerous studies and research projects have been carried out to acquire an understanding of heat transport performance for their functional application to heat conveyance augmentation. The idea of this study is to inspect the entropy production in Darcy-Forchheimer Ree-Eyring nanofluid containing bioconvection flow toward a stretching surface is the topic of discussion in this paper. It is also important to take into account the influence of gravitational forces, double stratification, heat source–sink and thermal radiation. In light of the second rule of thermodynamics, a model of the generation of total entropy is presented.

Incorporating boundary layer assumptions allows one to derive the governing system of partial differential equations. The dimensional flow model is transformed into a non-dimensional representation by applying the appropriate transformations. To deal with dimensionless flow expressions, the built-in shooting method and the BVP4c code in the Matlab software are used. Graphical analysis is performed on the data to investigate the variation in velocity, temperature, concentration, motile microorganisms, Bejan number and entropy production concerning the involved parameters.

The authors have analytically assessed the impact of Darcy Forchheimer's flow of nanofluid due to a spinning disc with slip conditions and microorganisms. The modeled equations are reset into the non-dimensional form of ordinary differential equations. Which are further solved through the BVP4c approach. The results are presented in the form of tables and figures for velocity, mass, energy and motile microbe profiles. The key conclusions are: The rate of skin friction incessantly reduces with the variation of the Weissenberg number, porosity parameter and Forchheimer number. The rising values of the Prandtl number reduce the energy transmission rate while accelerating the mass transfer rate. Similarly, the effect of Nb (Brownian motion) enhances the energy and mass transfer rates. The rate of augments with the flourishing values of bioconvection Lewis and Peclet number. The factor of concentration of microorganisms is reported to have a diminishing effect on the profile. The velocity, energy and entropy generation enhance with the rising values of the Weissenberg number.

According to the findings of the study, a slip flow of Ree-Eyring nanofluid was observed in the presence of entropy production and heat sources/sinks. There are features when the implementations of Darcy–Forchheimer come into play. In addition to that, double stratification with chemical reaction characteristics is presented as a new feature. The flow was caused by the stretching sheet. It has been brought to people's attention that although there are some investigations accessible on the flow of Ree-Eyring nanofluid with double stratification, they are not presented. This research draws attention to a previously unexplored topic and demonstrates a successful attempt to construct a model with distinctive characteristics.