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In addition to the seminal approach of Markowitz (1952) that is based on finding the optimal budget shares for minimizing risk, the authors also make use of the approach developed by Hatemi-J and El-Khatib (2015), which is built on finding the weights as budget shares for maximizing the risk-adjusted return of the underlying portfolio. For testing the stability of the portfolio benefits, the asymmetric interaction between oil, equity and bonds is tested.

Oil is a major investment commodity. The literature shows mixed results regarding oils' ability to provide diversification benefits. This paper re-examines this issue by applying a new portfolio optimization approach.

The authors find that oil still yields portfolio diversification benefits; contrary to the traditional Markowitz portfolio approach, the asymmetric causality test results show that oil does not cause bonds for either positive or negative changes; however, oil does cause stocks but only for stocks' negative changes. Hence, oil can still make the returns of a portfolio of stocks and bonds unstable through oil's effect on stocks.

This is the first attempt to investigate the potential portfolio diversification benefits of stocks, bonds and oil by using the combination of risk and return explicitly in the optimization problem. The new insights provided by this article might be valuable to the investors, financial institutions and policy makers.

This study seeks to investigate the extent and structure of equity price interdependence among the socially responsible investment (SRI) markets of Australia, Canada, Japan, UK and USA over the period 1994‐2010.

The paper examines the degree of price co‐movement between SRI markets by using a vector autoregression analysis to identify the markets which have significant price co‐movements. Subsequently, a variance decomposition analysis is conducted among the markets which are significantly related in order to determine the extent of interaction between these markets and to identify the markets that are most and least influential.

The results show that the SRI markets are significantly interdependent and have become more so over the years. The USA and the UK are the markets most linked to others while Canada and Australia are the most influential. However, although the markets are significantly integrated, the level of integration is still at a low level.

This is the first known study to examine price linkages among international SRI markets. This knowledge is important for investors as the benefits from international diversification depends on the extent of linkages between different SRI markets. Such knowledge is also valuable for policymakers and regulators if they are to address international contagion risk between markets. The study found that SRI markets are significantly linked; however, the level of linkages is still at a relatively low level. This implies that there are still significant benefits to be derived by SRI investors through international diversification.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether socially responsible investment (SRI) is less sensitive to market downturns than conventional investments; the legal implications for fund managers and trustees; and possible legislative reforms to allow conventional funds more scope to invest in SRI.

The paper uses the market model to estimate betas over the past 15 years for SRI funds and conventional investment funds during economic downturns, as distinct from during more “normal” (non‐recessionary) economic times.

The beta risk of SRI, both in Australia and internationally, increases more than that of conventional investment during economic downturns. Traditional fund managers and trustees in Australia are therefore likely to breach their fiduciary duties if they go long – or remain long – in SRI funds during economic downturns, unless relevant legislation is reformed.

The methodology assumes that alpha and beta in the market model are constant. Second, it categorises the state of the market into “normal” economic conditions and downturns using dummy variables. More sophisticated techniques could be used in future research.

The current law would prevent conventional funds from investing in SRI. If SRI is viewed as socially desirable, useful legislative reforms could include explicitly overriding the common law to allow conventional funds to invest in SRI; introducing a 150 percent tax deduction or investment allowance for SRI; and allowing SRI sub‐funds to obtain deductible gift recipient status from the Australian Tax Office and other taxation authorities.

The accurate assessment of risk in SRIs is an area which, despite its serious legal implications, is yet to be subjected to rigorous empirical investigation.

Green finance has shown the importance of being socially responsible and supporting the flow of financial instruments to develop environmentally sustainable and ethical business models. The growing trends raised the need for a quantitative study to address scientific performance analysis and intellectual development. This paper aims to cater quantitative statistics, through a bibliometric review to understand the vital intellectual and influential constitution of green and socially responsible finance.

The authors apply trending and cutting-edge quali-quantitative approach of bibliometric citation analysis and review of 280 journal articles from the Web of Science database for the period of 1981–2021.

The results identify the leading academic authors, journals, institutions and countries with relation to green and socially responsible finance literature. We also discuss three research streams in this field: (1) overview of green finance, perception and investor behavior; (2) analysis of performance models and growth factors of green finance; (3) pricing mechanism of SRI. Finally, we identify the research gaps within existing green finance literature, proposing 30 research questions for the future agenda.

The study confines on the Web of Science database, English published articles in known journals and reviews only. It relies on a reputable source and top scientific productions with the most direct link to green finance.

To the best of the authors knowledge, this paper is the first to discuss research streams in the literature of Green finance from a bibliometric aspect along with vast coverage of articles from reputed journals and databases till date. The results of this research along with future research questions will guide the researchers and academicians to further explore and stand on solid quantitative basis regarding the scientific development of Green finance.

The scope of this research is to investigate performing loan efficiency for fifty European banks during the period 2008–2017.

The study is structured as a two-stage analysis of performing loan efficiency and its driving factors. In the first stage of the proposed methodology “Data Envelopment Analysis” is used to estimate performing loan efficiency for each bank included in the sample. A bootstrap statistical procedure enhances the findings. In the second stage, the impact of other factors on the efficiency scores of loan performance using tobit regression is investigated.

The results are consistent with the findings of the individual banks' financial analyses. According to the findings of DEA implementation, the evaluated banks may enhance their cost efficiency by 39% on average. In addition, the results indicate that loan efficiency performance improves after 2015, coinciding with the business cycle's upward trend. The tobit regression is employed in the second stage to examine the influence of bank-related and macroeconomic factors on banks' loan management efficiency. According to the findings of the tobit regression, three factors, namely the capital adequacy ratio, GDP per capita and managerial inefficiency, have a substantial influence on performing loan efficiency.

This research investigates the effectiveness of European economic policy in protecting the European banking system from the consequences of the sovereign debt crisis in several euro area members. The results highlight the distance of the Eurozone from the level of the ‘optimal currency area’.

We aim to analyze the early trajectory of Argentine industry from the perspective of uneven and combined development. Argentine integration into the world market based on the export of agricultural goods had not neglected industrial development. At first, Argentine industry benefited from its late emergence and rapidly followed the path of leading countries’ manufactures. But initial advantage soon turned into a liability. The emergence of large-scale industry required expanded markets that were already occupied by older and stronger competitors. The 1930 crisis and the impact of the Second World War aggravated this problem. Attempts to remedy the situation – an export-led industrialization scheme and an internal-market-oriented economy – failed successively. We study this process through the analysis of Argentine industrial chambers’ journals, reports from the United States Department of Foreign Trade and Argentine official government documents. We find that the export-led industrialization project failed because of the weakness of Argentine industries and not because of economic nationalism. That was the outcome of the previous failure of liberal projects and of the international constraints imposed by the Second World War and its aftermath. During this later period of internal-market-oriented economy, the gap between Argentine and international productivity widened. This paper presents an innovative interpretation that transcends liberal and nationalistic explanations and serves as a case study of the implications of uneven and combined development.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the online information system Redalyc as an intermediary tool that provides Latin American scientific articles with international standards (mostly related to natural sciences and developed countries) as well as with specific areas to host local research.

Redalyc is based on a semantic intersection model proposed by Russian semiologist Yuri Lotman. This model allows us to visualize the role played by Redalyc as a mediator between opposites, i.e. local science versus global science, and natural sciences versus social sciences. The paper presents some of the projects Redalyc has developed in conjunction with different countries and different scientific communities.

The paper describes some characteristics that local projects, similar to Redalyc, must have in order to become an intermediary between scientific journal production indexes that link global parameters for scientific communication with local production. The paper finds that efforts should not only be centered on the development of strategies to change certain inertias that distinguish local social scientific production (e.g. dependence on literary resources, lack of recognition of periodical media), but also on the way they could help these disciplines and local media overcome certain barriers, namely: normalization, language and technological handicaps.

The recognition of Latin American scientific production implies a dual process that not only involves local policies (scientific councils), but also requires producing reliable databases to provide scientists and journal editors with global references on how to produce visible scientific literature and pertinent knowledge for their contexts. Redalyc is currently a database that contributes in both ways.

Industrialization is a major contributor to pollution and the worsening of some social problems. A change in this context would help in a new industrial model aiming at a viable and sustainable manufacturing system. This research aims to verify the state of the art of sustainability within the industrial production process through a systematic literature review, verifying the main characteristics in relation to industrial sustainability that the literature demonstrates.

The development of the research took place in three stages: a survey of articles with Journal Citation Reports (JCR), the construction of the database and descriptive analysis and text mining analyses of social networks and content. The survey took place through academically endorsed research platforms, totaling a total of 352 scientific articles, which included 18 quality management tools and worked with at least one sustainability indicator (financial, social and environmental).

Lean manufacturing, integrated management system and Six Sigma were the most cited quality tools, and articles containing the three indicators were found more frequently. It was found that most authors treated sustainability only as an environmental contribution. Knowledge of the organization's structural and management issues is essential for implementing sustainability and production process improvement.

This work is the first to develop a systematic analysis regarding the use of sustainability implementation in the industrial production process, considering a wide scope of production process tools, guiding on the characteristics of sustainability relating to the main critical success factors (CSFs), motivations, difficulties and benefits that lead industries in different parts of the world to implement sustainability.