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In the first part of this article, published in the May issue of Anti‐Corrosion, the authors described two new products of the Czechoslovak chemical industry and their properties, namely KRNB conservation wax and paper with SVIK vaporising inhibitor. In this concluding part details are given on a number of tests showing the efficiency of the products.

The authors describe two new products of the Czechoslovak chemical industry and their properties, namely KRNB conservation wax and paper with SVIK vaporising inhibitor. Both materials have been developed at the State Research institute for the Protection of Material, have been thoroughly tested, and are now in production. Instructions are given for the use of both media, and an indication is given of the sphere of applications, in which they have advantages over all other present methods of temporary protection of metal products.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the absolute and risk-adjusted stock return performance of the US health care industry conditional upon the presidential administration’s political party and the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy stance. It evaluates this return behavior across the 60-year time period from 1954 to 2013, and sub-divides this entire period into the pre-Medicare period (1954-1964), Medicare period (1965-1984), and Medicare-plus-high-health-care-inflation period (1985-2013).

The study uses monthly returns to the health care industry and overall market, characterizing each sample month as either having a Republican or Democratic president and either a contractionary or expansionary monetary policy regime determined by whether the Federal Reserve is increasing or decreasing interest rates, respectively. It incorporates univariate and multivariate analysis to quantify the return behavior of both the health care industry and the overall market during the entire period and all three sub-periods. Additionally, it utilizes a common four-factor multivariate regression model and associated hypothesis testing to characterize risk-adjusted excess returns (i.e. α) to the health care industry during the entire period and all three sub-periods.

The health care industry has earned robust, positive risk-adjusted returns with the magnitude of the returns sensitive to the political party of the administration and the monetary policy regime. The authors find that prior to 1965 (1954-1964), when the president was a Republican, during times of monetary contraction, health care earned an excess risk-adjusted return. There was no association between Democratic administrations and excess health care returns prior to 1965. In contrast, the authors find that after 1965 this relationship changes. The authors find that returns to health care were positive for Republicans during times of monetary expansion and positive for Democrats during monetary contraction. The authors also find this relationship has become more pronounced after 1984.

The study extends prior literature, which has shown that the health care industry is a priced factor in the US stock market and that it provides significant risk-adjusted returns in the recent past. Uniquely, this study shows that the excess returns to health care vary considerably over the past 60 years, and that these excess returns are quite sensitive to political policy, proxied by the presidential administration party, and monetary policy, as measured using Fed discount rate changes. These findings have implications for management and shareholders of highly regulated and subsidized industries and firms.

This study investigates the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on the inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI), specifically focusing on two components of FDI: greenfield investment and cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As). The objective is to analyze how EPU influences these two types of FDI differently. It further investigates how this impact varies during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Data were collected from various sources such as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Policy uncertainty index and the World Bank database to create a sample covering 213 countries from 2003 to 2020. The research objective was accomplished by utilizing the panel ordinary least squares (OLS) with fixed effects estimator.

The results demonstrate that countries that experience more EPU observe a decrease in FDI inflows. The authors also observe that FDI inflows have reduced due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the findings show that the impact of EPU is different between two components of FDI during the Covid-19 period. Specifically, the authors find that when uncertainty is trigged by the health crisis, there is an increase in FDI inflows in the form of cross-border M&As only. One possible reason is that cross-border M&As investors may take advantage of institutional quality (such as corruption) as an “efficient grease” to quickly expedite the entry process, which ultimately leads to a rise in cross-border M&As investment.

Overall, the study attempts to demonstrate empirical evidence about how EPU affects FDI inflows with an up-to-date dataset. In addition, the authors illustrate the significance of breaking down total FDI inflows into two sub-categories when examining the relationship between EPU and FDI. Third, the authors prove that the influence of EPU on FDI inflows differ significantly among different types of FDI components.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-02-2023-0114

This study investigated the moderating role of democracy in the relationship between corruption and foreign direct investment. The purpose of this study is to understand whether corruption has different effects on the location decisions of multinational enterprises (MNEs) depending on the regime type.

This study explored how institutional context influenced the impacts of corruption on the location decisions of MNEs, specifically using a sample of Chinese cross-border mergers and acquisitions between 2000 and 2020.

This study assessed the role of democracy in the relationship between corruption and the location decisions of Chinese MNEs. In general, this study found that Chinese MNEs were hindered by host country corruption, but that these detrimental effects were weaker in the presence of more effective democratic institutions.

This study contributes to the literature on institutional factors in international business through its simultaneous investigation of the effects of both democracy and corruption on the location decisions of MNEs. Moreover, there is a prevailing view that Chinese MNEs are willing to enter countries with high corruption, but the results of this study indicate that they are risk-averse in ways similar to their Western counterparts.

This study aims to examine investor attention by exploring the trading behavior of investors in US-based exchange traded funds (ETFs) of countries active in the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cups.

The present study employs event study methodology to measure abnormal returns and excess trading volume of country-specific ETFs during six FIFA World Cups. The sample of ETFs includes 19 participating countries.

Consistent with investor behavior that might be explained by attention effect, the study finds that country-specific ETFs from participating countries do indeed behave differently during FIFA World Cups events. The authors find significant evidence of abnormal trading volume and, albeit weaker, abnormal returns during cups.

This study contributes to the literature on investor behavior, linking investor attention with salient sports events.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of political stability on corruption by drawing upon a sample encompassing both developed and developing European and Asian countries.

The dataset, sourced from the Refinitiv database, spans from July 2014 to May 2022. Panel data techniques, specifically pooled estimation and dynamic panel data [generalized method of moments (GMM)] are employed. The analysis encompasses both fixed and random effects models to capture country-specific cross-sectional effects. To validate our findings, we perform a robustness test by including in the investigation four control variables, namely poverty, type of governance, economic freedom and inflation. To test heterogeneity, the dataset is further divided into two distinct subsamples based on the countries’ locations.

Empirical findings substantiate that political stability (viewed as the risk of government destabilization) has a positive and significant impact on corruption in all analyzed samples of European and Asian countries, though some differences are observed in various subsamples. When we take into account the control variables, these analysis results are robust.

This research provided a panel data analysis with GMM, while other empirical methodologies could also be used, like the difference-in-difference approach. However, our results should be validated by extending the time and the sample to a worldwide sample and using alternative measures of corruption and political stability. Moreover, our focus was on a linear and unidirectional relationship between the considered variables, but it would be interesting to test in our further research a non-linear and bidirectional correlation between them. Furthermore, we have introduced in the robustness test only four economic variables, but to consolidate our findings, we plan to include socioeconomic and demographic variables in future studies.

These outcomes imply that authorities should be aware of the necessity of implementing anti-corruption policies designed to establish effective agencies and enforcement structures for combating systemic corruption, to improve the political environment and the quality of institutions and to apply coherent economic strategies to accelerate economic growth because higher political stability and sustainable development determine a decrease in levels of corruption.

At the microeconomic level, the survival of organizations may be in danger from new types of corruption and money laundering. Therefore, in order to prevent financial harm, the top businesses worldwide should respond to instances of corruption through strengthened supervisory procedures. This calls for the creation of a mechanism inside the code of conduct where correct reporting of suspected situations of corruption would have a prompt procedure to be notified of. To avoid corruption in operational procedures, national plans and policies should be developed by government officials, executives and legislators on a national level, as well as by senior management and the board of directors on an organizational level. This might lower organizations' extra corruption-related expenses, assure economic growth and improve global welfare.

A novel feature of our research resides in its broad examination of a sizable sample of European and Asian countries regarding the nexus between corruption and political stability. The paper also investigates a less explored topic in economic literature, namely the impact of political stability on corruption. Furthermore, the study depicts policy recommendations, outlining effective and reasonable measures aimed at improving the political landscape and combating corruption.

The paper aims to highlight differences in bank performance based on state politics during the onset of the Covid pandemic. The response to Covid pandemic created an unusual opportunity for an investigation of how politics impacts banking due to the initial response to the pandemic being heavily impacted by political affiliation states' governors and dominant parties in state legislatures. Previous research looked at impact of elections on the federal level (both executive and legislative branches) on bank risk and performance. The response to the Covid pandemic in 2020 allows for an investigation on how political influence on the state level impacted banks performance.

The Covid pandemic was an unexpected storm that entered the United States with a vengeance in 2020, taking countless lives and ravaging the economic landscape. The response to the pandemic quickly took a political spin as republican governors showed greater reluctance to shutter business activity in hopes of slowing down the spread of the virus than their democratic counterparts. This paper examines the impact of the two Americas created along the lines of political influence as it impacted bank performance over four-quarters beginning with the fourth quarter of 2019. All US banks are split into groups based on the political affiliation of state governors and the dominant party in state legislatures to measure impact of politics on bank performance and risk.

This research finds that banks operating in states with republican governors produced greater profits and exhibited higher liquidity levels. The same results held for banks in states where both the governorship and the legislature were controlled by republicans versus banks in states where both the governor and the legislature were democratic. Interestingly, the findings present a reversal when examining banks in states led by republican governors and democratic legislatures versus banks in states with democratic governors and republican legislatures. In those instances of mixed leadership, banks in states with democratic governors tend to show greater profits, greater liquidity while demonstrating lower asset quality.

A paper published in Managerial Finance in 2018 discussed the impact of the parties in control of the White house and the legislative branch on bank performance and risk. There have been no studies, to the author’s knowledge, that look at how states' political leadership (gubernatorial and legislative) impact on bank performance. Because the response to the Covid pandemic became a politically polarized issue, the onset of the crisis allowed for measurement of how different responses by republican and democratic state leadership impacted bank performance and risk.