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Our aim is to develop a highly precise corporate crisis prediction model that surpasses previous versions, rooted in the forefront of technological advancements.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) for corporate default prediction with a novel approach based on a mix of techniques, enabling it to achieve a higher accuracy. We investigated models with sequence lengths that were both fixed and variable, and we chose the best variable sequence length model.

Our findings demonstrate that the artificial techniques implemented lead to very high accuracy in predicting business crises compared to previous research efforts, even those utilising long-time sequences or a high volume of observations.

We highlight the key variables with a higher predictive power that need monitoring to prevent business crises. We also aim to open a new avenue of research that, starting from the use of these techniques and our results, can implement models incorporating non-accounting variables to prevent business crises.

We provide a model/tool that assesses a possible business crisis in advance through a monitoring and alert system. Policymakers can use our research’s output as a tool to combine with current credit-scoring systems and to assess the effectiveness of the new corporate crisis reforms that are upcoming in many European countries. The results of our research can be useful also to banks, public entities, and consulting firms that interact with companies and are interested in the evaluation of a firm’s financial health and stability.

Our innovative work leverages cutting-edge methodologies such as deep Recurrent Neural Networks and explainable AI. This choice is driven by the rapid evolution of AI techniques in practical application.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the financial factors across multiple levels of analysis that influence the performance effects of the unrelated diversification strategy, including institutional-, industry- and firm-levels.

Using a unique panel dataset of Italian firms from 1980 to 2010, the paper tests hypotheses on how industry external financial dependence and the firm's financial constraints both separately and jointly alter the performance benefits of unrelated diversification in contexts with financial market inefficiencies.

Unrelated diversification increases performance in weak financial contexts and such positive effect is enhanced by greater industry external financial dependence and greater firm financial constraints. However, as financial markets develop, the moderating effects of firm financial constraints shrink.

The study highlights the importance of recognizing the multiple financial contingencies that may alter the benefits of the unrelated diversification strategy, suggesting caution in its pursuit to boost firm performance.

The authors develop a theoretical framework that explains the performance outcomes of unrelated diversification, linking the benefits of an internal capital market (ICM) with the financial context of the firm and offering a fine-grained analysis that moves beyond the advanced/emerging economy dichotomy. Furthermore, leveraging on the unprecedented time frame of the empirical analysis, the paper highlights the crucial role of industry- and firm-level financial contingencies and demonstrates that their effects change at varying levels of development of the financial context.

The paper aims to focus on a well‐known topic in the financial literature: the relation between capital structure and firm value. The controversial empirical results on this topic can be attributable to a lack of attention to the interaction between capital structure and other corporate governance variables. In fact, capital structure represents a corporate governance device that can preserve corporate governance efficiency and protect its ability to create value.

The paper, after a synthetic review of the main literature, defines, with a descriptive model, a theoretical approach that can contribute in clearing up the relation between capital structure, corporate governance and value. It provides a research proposition, and some suggestions, that should be applied for future empirical research on this topic while it also promotes a more precise design for empirical analysis.

The debate on the relation between capital structure and a firm's value needs to take directly into account the role of moderation and/or mediation of the corporate governance. It is necessary to consider the presence of complementarity between capital structure and other corporate governance variables such as: ownership concentration; managerial ownership; the role of the board of directors; and so on.

This paper promotes, as an aim for future research, a verification of the validity of this model through application of the analysis to a wide sample of firms.

The paper tried to suggest how to improve previous controversial analysis on this topic.

This paper aims to investigate the nature and dynamics of the interaction between university spin-offs (USOs) and academia.

The theoretical framework is grounded in an interactive view based on the industrial marketing and purchasing literature on USOs and their development. The concepts of activity links, resource ties and actor bonds are used as a starting point for capturing the content and dynamics of the interaction. The empirical part of the paper consists of four case studies captured through interviews as the main data source and analysed to conclude how the interaction between the USO and academia developed over time.

The study identifies a multi-faceted and dynamic content of the interaction. The paper discerns and discusses research and development links, knowledge and equipment ties and social, legal, financial and organizational bonds with inventors, other academic partners and innovation support organizations. The dynamics are manifested both through changes within individual relationships and by adding/ending relationships. One main conclusion regards the existence of wave-like patterns of interaction with academic partners driven by the USOs’ needs and the establishment of customer relationships.

Most of the previous research has described a linear process in which the USO leaves academia once the idea has been transferred to a company. This paper contrasts this view by developing and using an analytical framework to capture the dynamic and continuous interaction between USO and academia.

This paper aims to present the application and critical reflection on the effects of a intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD): the Soundbeam Imitation Intervention (SII). The intervention is based on the imitation of meaningless body gestures supported by a musical feedback. The rationale underlying SII is that mirror neurons deficit may represent the cause for the incomplete development of social and motor functioning in children with ASD. Following this assumption, it is possible to hypothesise that a systematic activation of this a system through the simultaneous observation-execution of meaningless body gestures may affect functional changes of mirror-related functions.

A sample of 14 children, who were between 5 and 9 years of age, with a diagnosis of ASD were involved in a six weeks’ SII programme. The programme is designed as a three-step progression, where each step includes exercises that focus on an activity: synchronous/one arm imitation, synchronous/two arms imitation and delayed imitation. Exercises are based on repeated movements-melodies associations of increasing difficulty. Motor imitation and social attention were assessed using a synchronous video-modelling task pre and post intervention.

Data highlight significant improvements in imitation accuracy and duration of social sustained attention were achieved.

Data reported in this paper provide preliminary and promising evidence that imitation and social attention skills acquired through SII can be generalised to a video-modelling imitation setting. The SII ordinal execution has included meaningless gestures, usually excluded from previous interventions, and this adds further validity to the training.