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The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between female empowerment/participation and firm performance.

The data are cross-sectional, extracted from the records of the Enterprise Surveys of the World Bank (ESWB). It covers 561 privately-owned firms from Lebanon. Tobit regressions are used in the analysis.

The findings show that firm performance is positively associated with one form of female empowerment (female involvement in management), and the positive and significant association remains significant when several control variables are considered. However, the positive association between firm performance and the other form of female empowerment (female involvement in ownership) does not hold the inclusion of control variables in the regression. Furthermore, there is a positive association between firm performance and female participation in the workplace (the percentage of female workers), which remains qualitatively unchanged when several control variables are considered.

This is one of the first research studies that examines the relationship between female empowerment/participation and firm performance, while differentiating between female involvement in management and female involvement in ownership. Notably, the study extends the authors’ limited understanding on that relationship in the context of a small and understudied country such as Lebanon, where privately-held firms dominate.

This paper examines the extreme dependence and asymmetric risk spillovers between crude oil futures and ten US stock sector indices (consumer discretionary, consumer staples, energy, financials, health care, industrials, information technology, materials, telecommunication and utilities) before and during COVID-19 outbreak. This study is based on the rationale that stock sectors exhibit heterogeneity in their response to oil prices depending on whether they are classified as oil-intensive or non-oil-intensive sectors and the possible time variation in the dependence and risk spillover effects.

The authors employ static and dynamic symmetric and asymmetric copula models as well as Conditional Value at Risk (VaR) (CoVaR). Finally, they use robustness tests to validate their results.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, crude oil returns showed an asymmetric tail dependence with all stock sector returns, except health care and industrials (materials), where an average (symmetric tail) dependence is identified. During the COVID-19 pandemic, crude oil returns exhibit a lower tail dependency with the returns of all stock sectors, except financials and consumer discretionary. Furthermore, there is evidence of downside and upside risk asymmetric spillovers from crude oil to stock sectors and vice versa. Finally, the risk spillovers from stock sectors to crude oil are higher than those from crude oil to stock sectors, and they significantly increase during the pandemic.

There is heterogeneity in the linkages and the asymmetric bidirectional systemic risk between crude oil and US economic sectors during bearish and bullish market conditions; this study is the first to investigate the average and extreme tail dependence and asymmetric spillovers between crude oil and US stock sectors.

This study investigates the effect of climate change sentiments (CCS) on firm value (FV) and how environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices moderate this effect.

High-dimensional fixed effects and a two-stage generalized method of moments are applied to data on 6,059 publicly traded firms from 2006 to 2022.

There is a significant negative effect of CCS on FV, specifically on growth option value (GOV) and Tobin’s Q (TQR), which intensifies during crisis periods. ESG practices, however, moderate this relationship positively, especially for firms with higher GOV and TQR, enhancing their resilience to climate risks. External shocks accelerate sustainability-driven strategies in firms with higher CCS exposure. In developed countries, firms show a stronger sensitivity to CCS due to stronger institutional environments and investor pressure, while firms in developing countries exhibit a weaker sensitivity.

The results underline the necessity for corporate managers to proactively manage climate-related risks and integrate robust ESG strategies to sustain and enhance FV. Analysts, risk managers and investors should consider a company’s exposure to CCS and its ESG performance when assessing risk profiles. Policymakers are encouraged to implement stronger regulatory frameworks and incentives promoting corporate transparency and accountability in managing climate-related risks.

This study unfolds novel evidence, linking psychological research and the traditional basic modified model through an examination of the effect of CCS on FV using an international sample. It highlights the critical role of ESG practices in mitigating the adverse effects of CCS on FV, providing valuable insights for businesses, investors and policymakers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of structural breaks on the conditional variance of carbon emission allowance prices.

The authors employ the symmetric GARCH model, and two asymmetric models, namely the exponential GARCH and the threshold GARCH.

The authors show that the forecast performance of GARCH models improves after accounting for potential structural changes. Importantly, we observe a significant drop in the volatility persistence of emission prices. In addition, the effects of positive and negative shocks on carbon market volatility increase when breaks are taken into account. Overall, the findings reveal that when structural breaks are ignored in the emission price risk, the volatility persistence is overestimated and the news impact is underestimated.

The authors are the first to examine how the conditional variance of carbon emission allowance prices reacts to structural breaks.

The emergence of cryptocurrencies has tremendously changed the way of financial transactions around the world which has led to form distinct discussions in the field regarding its reliability. This paper aims to evaluate the published literatures on cryptocurrency identifying its growth, citation, prolific authors, journals, countries, active funding agencies, collaboration pattern and emerging research hotspots in the area.

Scientometrics and Altmetrics parameters have been incorporated in the study. Literatures covered from the Scopus database searching within “Article Title, Abstract, Keywords” with keywords “cryptocurrency” OR “digital currency” OR “bitcoin” OR “Ethereum” by limiting the time range of 2013–2022, English language and journal articles only. Total 6,107 documents have been identified. The further analysis and visualisation is performed using MSExcel, VOSviewer, Biblioshiny and Tableau. Another tool, Dimension.ai is used to identify the Altmetric Attention Score.

The findings reveal that the growth of research and citation rate hiked from the year 2017 till now. Elie Bouri is the top contributor, IEEE Access is the most prolific journal, China being the prolific country. Topics like Blockchain, Bitcoin, Ethereum, smart contracts, financial markets are emerging researched hotspots. The reliability of crypto market is still not clear because of its high volatility. The findings of the study will be more useful in the academia, subject specialists, research institutions, funding agencies, publishing agencies in decision-making.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no such study found considering both Scientometrics and Altmetrics approaches on cryptocurrency research with the selected time bound.

This paper aims to examine the dynamic relationship across stock market returns in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arabic Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, and Oman from June 2005 to January 2012.

The paper uses a multivariate model with leptokurtic distribution which allows for both return asymmetry and fat tails. The paper also derives from the model the conditional correlation between stock markets and examines the impact of the global financial crisis of 2008 on the conditional variance and correlation.

The empirical results show that the Middle East and North African (MENA) markets are interconnected by their volatilities and not by their returns. Volatility persists in each market and significant volatility spillovers from small to relatively larger markets. During the crisis, the paper finds that conditional volatilities across markets increase but then during the post-crisis period return to their pre-crisis levels. More importantly, the conditional correlation behaves differently, with a significant evidence of downwards trend in some correlations across the MENA stock markets.

One limitation of the study relates to the relatively short-sample period which drives the empirical results.

The key results imply that there is still a possibility of benefits from portfolio diversification across specific MENA countries during periods of high volatility.

No previous study investigates the transmission of both the first and second moments of the return series across the MENA stock markets allowing for time-varying volatility and correlation and accounts for the 2008 global financial crisis to examine whether the conditional volatilities and correlations have strengthened or weakened during the crisis and afterwards.

The purpose of this paper is to examine fine wine’s safe-haven status with respect to US equity movements.

We use a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model and its variant to measure the asymmetric reaction to positive and negative shocks.

Our empirical results show an inverted asymmetric volatility in the wine market; positive shocks increase the conditional volatility more than negative shocks. That is the opposite reaction in the volatility of equity returns occurs in the wine market. As leverage effect and volatility feedback effect do not adequately explain this reaction, we follow the work of Baur (2012) and propose the safe haven effect. Several robustness tests largely confirm the empirical findings, with major implications for wine investors. Finally, we provide further evidence on the benefits of adding wine investments to an equity portfolio through an increase in risk reduction effectiveness.

Based on the results of the robustness analysis, the recommendations in terms of including fine wines in portfolios must be issued with caution.

Our findings are crucial to the needs of market participants who are interested in including wine assets in their equity portfolio.

No previous study investigates the safe haven property of fine wine return, and accounts for risk reduction effectiveness when adding wine assets to a portfolio of US equities.

The need for an efficient enterprise risk management (ERM) has never been greater than today when organisations face complex and interconnected risks targeting their business models. Macroeconomics and geopolitical uncertainties, digital transformations of industries and sectors, cybersecurity, and climate change, among other trends, present significant uncertainties. This article aims to analyse the scientific papers on research specific to ERM and review the links between the researched area and market or corporate governance topics. Risk management is underdeveloped in many organisations; the current standard for risk management is a reactive approach. It is usually treated in isolation rather than as a core competency and a strategic asset. As a result, risk management processes are ineffective and seen as adding value to decision-making and responding to uncertainties. Based on the literature, the scope is to set up the framework for future research on ERM by building a bibliometric analysis and examining articles collected from the Web of Science Core Collection database. The study identified the essential research on this topic based on the citations of the papers and the author’s countries with the highest number of publications and citations. VOSviewer software analysed the ERM system based on keywords, citations, geographical distribution, and authorships. The research proves a strong connection between the ERM and corporate governance topics considering the stage where most countries are regarding this subject.

This paper investigates the dynamic intercorrelation among cryptocurrency (Bitcoin) and conventional financial assets (gold, oil and S&P 500).

The dynamic contemporaneous nexus has been analyzed using spillover index developed and extended by Diebold and Yilmaz (2012, 2014) and Kyrtsou-Labys (2006) nonlinear causality tests. This study is implemented using the daily data spanning from January 2013 to December 2021.

First, using the spillover index, the authors find evidence that the S&P 500 was a net transmitter of volatility from oil and gold markets, but a net receiver of volatility from Bitcoin. Return spillovers from crude oil were transmitted first to gold, and Bitcoin markets and return spillovers from gold were transmitted to Bitcoin. Second, Kyrtsou-Labys nonlinear causality tests provide us further insights into the lead-lag interconnections among the four key considered variables from the economic perspective. Specifically, a close inspection of these empirical results, the integration of the four key assets is significant. Similarly, price fluctuation dependency among Bitcoin, stock, gold and oil markets is generally minimal, but it strengthens throughout the COVID-19 period.

This paper is the first study employing the spillover index Diebold-Yilmaz alongside with Kyrtsou-Labys nonlinear causality tests not only to capture the directional return spillover effects but also to highlight the potential presence of asymmetric causality relationships, nonlinear effects among assets under investigation that the previous studies have been ignored in these relations. Therefore, the main contribution of this article to the related literature in this field is significant.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically analyze the literature around regulatory compliance and market manipulation in capital markets through the use of bibliometrics and propose future research directions. Under the domain of capital markets, this theme is a niche area of research where greater academic investigations are required. Most of the research is fragmented and limited to a few conventional aspects only. To address this gap, this study engages in a large-scale systematic literature review approach to collect and analyze the research corpus in the post-2000 era.

The big data corpus comprising research articles has been extracted from the scientific Scopus database and analyzed using the VoSviewer application. The literature around the subject has been presented using bibliometrics to give useful insights on the most popular research work and articles, top contributing journals, authors, institutions and countries leading to identification of gaps and potential research areas.

Based on the review, this study concludes that, even in an era of global market integration and disruptive technological advancements, many important aspects of this subject remain significantly underexplored. Over the past two decades, research has lagged behind the evolution of capital market crime and market regulations. Finally, based on the findings, the study suggests important future research directions as well as a few research questions. This includes market manipulation, market regulations and new-age technologies, all of which could be very useful to researchers in this field and generate key inputs for stock market regulators.

The limitation of this research is that it is based on Scopus database so the possibility of omission of some literature cannot be completely ruled out. More advanced machine learning techniques could be applied to decode the finer aspects of the studies undertaken so far.

Increased integration among global markets, fast-paced technological disruptions and complexity of financial crimes in stock markets have put immense pressure on market regulators. As economies and equity markets evolve, good research investigations can aid in a better understanding of market manipulation and regulatory compliance. The proposed research directions will be very useful to researchers in this field as well as generate key inputs for stock market regulators to deal with market misbehavior.

This study has adopted a period-wise broad-based scientific approach to identify some of the most pertinent gaps in the subject and has proposed practical areas of study to strengthen the literature in the said field.