From 2008 and 2025, a number of worldwide crises caused considerable fluctuations in the Indian share market. Investor behaviour, market volatility, and general financial stability have all been significantly impacted by events like the Global Financial Crisis (2008), the Eurozone Debt Crisis, the COVID-19 epidemic, the war between Russia and Ukraine, inflationary pressures, geopolitical conflicts, and global economic slowdowns. The goal of the current study is to examine the organism of research on how severely international crises have affected the Indian stock market and to determine the opportunities and difficulties that regular investors encounter in these unpredictable times. This study is descriptive and analytical in nature, and it is solely based on secondary data gathered from books, journals, financial institution reports, regulatory bodies, research papers, and reliable web sources.

Over the past four decades, amortization charges have increased substantially, reflecting both economic changes and evolving accounting standards. In parallel, managers and investors have placed greater emphasis on performance measures that exclude amortization but retain depreciation (earnings before interest, taxes, and amortization [EBITA]). This study compares EBITA with earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA). Using valuation multiples, EBITDA consistently exhibits the strongest association with market values, while EBITA outperforms EBIT, particularly as amortization has become more significant. However, when predicting stock returns, all three measures were informative prior to the financial crisis but have exhibited weaker predictive power since.

ABSTRACT This study examines the informational efficiency of eight MENA stock markets during four major crises: the Global Financial Crisis, the Arab Spring, COVID-19, and the Russia – Ukraine war. Using daily data (2007–2011; 2020–2024) and rolling Shannon and Tsallis entropy, we assess linear and nonlinear efficiency. Results show a systematic decline in efficiency during crises, with stronger inefficiencies in Tunisia, Egypt, and Lebanon. Shannon entropy indicates reduced randomness, while Tsallis entropy reveals nonlinear dependence and herding. The findings support the Adaptive Market Hypothesis. Policy implications emphasize improving liquidity, transparency, and diversification to enhance market resilience.

ABSTRACT There is a limited understanding of how port-hinterland connections via inland shipping respond to major disruptions. This study investigates how containerized inland waterway transport in the Rhine-Alpine Corridor adapted after global disruptions between 2007 and 2022. Employing panel data modelling and network analysis, the paper examines regional transport hubs and reveals how their connections responded to events such as the financial crisis, critically low water levels, and geopolitical instability. The results provide insights into the vulnerability of cargo flows during disruptive years, along with distinct shifts in network connectivity following each event. The assessment reports the degree of robustness and redundancy across the corridor, offering practical guidance to support the development of regional responses to future disruptions.

ABSTRACT Corporate tax avoidance has become heavily criticized in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008. The present study aims to investigate the neutralization techniques Duth tax professionals (n = 42) use to justify corporate tax avoidance. In doing so, we respond to a call for more research examining how contexts and types of people influence the use of neutralization.. Our findings suggest that the opacity and complexity of the context of taxation shapes the manifestation of neutralization techniques. Furthermore, professionalism appears to not only shape the choice of techniques but provides a broader context that anchors neutralizations.

ABSTRACT The EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is among its most contested policies, criticised for incremental changes despite fundamental challenges. Recent scholarship suggests a partial shift in the sector's governance from agricultural exceptionalism towards post-exceptionalism – marked by the emergence of actors seeking more fundamental policy change. Yet, post-exceptionalism scholarship remains unclear regarding who these contesting actors are, and how, and with what effects they challenge exceptionalist arrangements. We conceptualise these actors as potential environmental policy entrepreneurs (EPEs) to examine their role and perceived effectiveness in the post-2013 and post-2020 CAP reforms. Based on interviews with 25 key stakeholders, we identify a growing network of EPEs, within and outside of closed policy networks. Public information and mobilisation strategies were perceived as most effective in challenging exceptionalist arrangements, while other strategies, like institutional barrier manipulation, increased over time but had limited impact. Political context played a crucial role: the global financial crisis and the war in Ukraine favoured economic and productionist ideas over environmental concerns. We reflect that while EPEs challenged the CAP’s exceptionalist governance, these arrangements remain resilient, raising critical questions about the ability to align EU agriculture with pressing sustainability challenges.

ABSTRACT Aotearoa New Zealand is a liberal democracy with among the world’s best functioning institutions. Yet we document that it has experienced a subtle democratic backsliding over the last two decades, with some mechanisms of state power changing in ways that limit democratic dissent and protect capitalist interests and economic elites. We note that it is part of a global authoritarian turn among neoliberal democracies since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Hence, we draw on the Authoritarian Neoliberalism school to show that New Zealand policymakers, like elsewhere, have weakened democratic oversight of parliamentary select committees and public scrutiny by governing through urgent decrees and centralising power in the executive, and introduced coercive measures to constrain the space for peaceful public protests against capitalist interests. We view this backsliding as likely to exacerbate the country’s already entrenched inequalities along class and ethnic lines.

ABSTRACT This paper examines whether dual VET enhances labour market resilience for young adults in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Using harmonised microdata from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) for the United States, linked via the Comparative Panel File (CPF), we compare unemployment among 25- to 34-year-olds whose highest attained qualification is dual VET (Germany) or a high school diploma (United States). Our weighted estimates indicate consistently lower and less volatile unemployment risk for dual VET graduates than for high school graduates, with the gap peaking during the crisis years and persisting thereafter. We interpret these patterns through the lenses of collective skill formation, school-to-work transitions, and the trade-off between specific and general skills. The findings suggest that sustaining and modernising high-quality dual VET can strengthen labour market resilience within a broader skills strategy.

When resources are scarce at crisis times and when competition is intense with other creative supplies, USA symphony orchestras and opera houses memorize and perform their repertoires (or repertories), so that seasons are crucially bundled between tradition and innovation. Since the beginning of the latest financial and real crisis (2007), USA classical music has seen different levels of funding from the federal government and businesses have encouraged more nonconventional programming (Pompe, Tamburri, 2016; Turbide, Laurin, 2009; Ravanas, 2008; Rushton, 2008; Turrini, 2006; Smith, 2007). On one side, fundraisers have stressed bundles (contemporary music with tradition) to sponsors; on the other side, marketing officers have emphasized the repertoire memory to audiences who constantly love Traviata, Boheme and Don Giovanni with echo of famous regisseurs, scenographers, etc. This is quite the same worldwide (Cancellieri, Turini, 2016). Fundraising and marketing affect economic performances of classical music, also thanks to social media and networks. Consumers have access to information about ticketing, rehearsals, present and past performances, etc. Art organizations strive to manage communication via social media to create brand values. Social media support both fundraising and marketing, as they mediate to sponsors and audiences: values, advocacy, videos and photos of the repertoire and nonconventional programming, which continually increase trustworthy relationships and nurture memories.This paper investigates 200 USA symphony orchestras and opera houses according to repertoires, revenues, expenses and gains in 2008 and 2015. With cluster analysis, three profiles emerge with different strategies, performances and emphasis on memory or innovation.

The rise and collapse of the A1 Grand Prix World Cup of Motorsport (A1GP) illustrates how short-lived racing series can succeed briefly through historical alignment rather than conceptual novelty alone. Through Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) documentation, A1GP race manuals, and historical contextual analysis, the championship’s trajectory from rapid global expansion to liquidation is reconstructed, and the structural conditions behind both its brief success and its collapse become visible. A1GP emerged from a specific conjunction of early twenty-first-century motorsport conditions: Formula One World Championship (F1)’s cost and governance crisis, FIA diversification, industrial capacity for standardized racing cars, Dubai-backed sporting ambition, and the renewed marketability of nation-framed competition in the post-9/11 era. Its decline followed management instability, strategic drift away from low-cost and fairness-based racing, unsuccessful biofuel initiatives that exposed the risks of greenwashing, mounting financial risk, and intensified pressure from incumbent racing institutions. The 2008 financial crisis accelerated rather than singularly caused the collapse. Despite its brevity, A1GP stands as a critical case in motorsport historiography: failed global ventures expose the cultural, technological, financial, and institutional conditions on which racing series depend for survival.

This article investigates the impact of sovereign debt defaults on gender inequality. The study applies dynamic panel econometric techniques to data for 130 developing countries from 1971 to 2022, finding that sovereign debt defaults increase gender inequality in developing countries in numerous dimensions, including education, employment, political representation, and legal rights. Through heterogeneity analysis, the study finds consistent adverse effects of sovereign debt defaults on gender inequality across regions. The effects tend to be more pronounced in high-income developing countries and those with high levels of defaulted sovereign debt. The article further examines the influence of two global sovereign debt crises stemming from the 2007–08 financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic on gender inequality. Results from the Synthetic Control Method show that, compared to the 2007–08 crisis, the COVID-19 crisis significantly contributed to widening gender inequality. These findings underscore the need for proactive policies to address gender inequality and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. HIGHLIGHTS Sovereign debt defaults widen gender inequality in developing countries. Adverse effects span women’s education, employment, and political representation. Gender inequality rises most in high-debt, higher-income developing countries. COVID-19 debt crisis amplified gender inequality more than the 2007–08 debt crisis. Results support gender-responsive debt policy and crisis management.

Purpose This paper aims to assess the international competitiveness of large multinational enterprises (MNEs) through the lens of the firm-specific advantages (FSAs) and country-specific advantages (CSAs) framework. Design/methodology/approach The authors extend Rugman et al.’s (2012) data set to cover an expanded time horizon that includes the post–global financial crisis decade. Using Fortune Global 500 firms from 1999 to 2017, the authors analyze how their regional and global competitiveness has evolved across this period. Findings The updated 2017 FSA–CSA matrix shows a rise in “hybrid” regional–global patterns in which firms increasingly recombine domestic strengths with globally sourced locational advantages to compete both regionally and internationally. The authors find that North American and European MNEs have modestly increased their global reach by leveraging strong FSAs, whereas Asia-Pacific firms, particularly those from China, have become more regionally embedded even as they tap into global CSAs to better serve domestic and intraregional markets. Research limitations/implications The authors outline strategic and policy implications for competing in an era of multipolar globalization and propose a future research agenda focused on the dynamic coevolution of FSAs and CSAs, the emergence of digital and green competitiveness and the resilience of regional value chains amid ongoing global supply-chain reconfigurations. Originality/value This study offers a comprehensive and longitudinal analysis of the world’s largest firms, providing new insights into how their international competitiveness has evolved over the past two decades.

ABSTRACT This paper examines whether trade liberalization raises or lowers the skill premium in China. Using individual-level panel data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), we exploit the 2008 global financial crisis as an external shock to trade and combine it with cross-provincial differences in pre-crisis trade dependence in a triple-difference framework. The results show that provinces with greater pre-crisis exposure to international trade experienced a larger post-crisis decline in the skill premium. This pattern implies that stronger trade liberalization is associated with a higher skill premium. The effect is more pronounced among younger and male workers and among workers employed in urban areas, non-state-owned enterprises, and smaller firms. The evidence also points to two channels: a contraction in skill-intensive industries and post-crisis fiscal expansion tilted toward unskilled labor demand. These findings provide new evidence on how trade shocks shape wage inequality and human capital incentives in a major developing economy.

The study on financial development and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa utilises System GMM analysis to investigate the relationship between financial development indicators and regional economic performance. The research findings reveal significant impacts of various financial indicators on economic growth, such as the positive influence of bank liquid reserves on bank assets ratio (R/A), trade openness, and the broad money to total reserves ratio (M/R) on the economic growth of Sub-Saharan Africa. Additionally, the study highlights the negative impact of Credit extended to the private sector by banks within the country (D_bank) on economic development, emphasising the importance of prudent credit allocation to avoid over-indebtedness and financial crises. These results provide valuable insights for policymakers aiming to foster sustainable economic growth in the region by leveraging financial development effectively.

Profitability structure of tourist companies during and after crises

Government ownership and stock price crash risk in banks: International evidence

The study critically examines the project of "amalgamation" of administrative territorial units (ATU) in the Republic of Moldova and observes discrepancies between the formal purpose and the anticipated effects. The analysis finds that the reform provides for an approximately three-fold reduction in the number of ATUs despite some initial inconsistencies in the official data. It highlights a tendency to transfer some competencies from the local to the central level, in contradiction with the declared objective of decentralization, as well as the promotion of digitalization as measures to improve public services, without analyzing the development of the real physical infrastructure. Several states have registered similar processes of promoting the concept of voluntary consolidation of municipalities at the first stage, with the application of the normative obligation to reduce ATUs at a later stage. Thus, if in Moldova the objective is to reduce about 66% of ATUs, in other states such as Ukraine, Albania, Denmark and Greece this indicator was even higher - about 87%, 84%, 64% and 69% respectively, and in Armenia during a reform similar in structure and tactics, 91% of ATUs were reduced (from 908 localities to 79 communities). In Moldova, over 50% of the measures in the reform action plan are financed from abroad, in Greece the liquidation of LPAs was a mandatory condition imposed by foreign financial institutions in the context of the financial crisis, and in Azerbaijan, where the idea of merger also originated from outside of the government, a revaluation of real estate was carried out in parallel, as a result of which the tax on private property increased several times without changing the tax rate - a similar movement to that registered in the national area. In conclusion, the comparative analysis highlights that the "amalgamation" programs in Eastern European countries followed similar technical models, often driven by initiatives supported by the NGO sector and external donors. The implementation of these reforms was frequently associated with debt processes, including for non-infrastructural components, which generated an increase in the financial and contractual obligations of the states. In administrative terms, the effects included both a greater distance between the citizen and the local authorities, and tendencies towards functional centralization, increasing political influence over the administration. At the same time, in some cases, the fiscal pressure on citizens increased by increasing taxes, in order to consolidate local budgets. Overall, the reforms analyzed indicate a predominantly technocratic approach, in which cultural, educational, social and infrastructure dimensions were marginal or absent, which may reduce citizens' wellbeing and increase the risks of loss of local identity.

ABSTRACT Reliable trade statistics are essential for forest sector modelling and policy, yet bilateral reports between exporters and importers often differ significantly. This study analyzes bilateral trade observations from 1997 to 2018 to measure and explain these discrepancies in the global forest products sector. We evaluated seven discrepancy measures and selected the symmetric percentage discrepancy based on its strong statistical properties. The results show a mean absolute discrepancy of 44.5%, with a clear pattern across the value chain: raw materials average 58.8% while finished goods average 33.4%. Using a two-way fixed effects panel model, we find that each doubling of bilateral trade volume is associated with an approximately 1.5% point lower discrepancy. However, this association varies. It is strongest for finished goods and high-income trading pairs but much weaker for raw materials and low-income partners. We also find a structural break following the 2008 financial crisis, after which the volume – discrepancy association largely weakened. Our findings show that data reliability depends heavily on the specific product and the trading partners’ resources, suggesting that data quality efforts may be most productive when targeted at high-risk categories rather than applied uniformly.

The focus on corporate governance in Asian economies intensified following major U.S. accounting scandals and the 2008 financial crisis. These events sparked a demand for stricter regulations and prompted regional governments to adopt best practice principles to discipline corporate behavior. While theoretical foundations are solid, the empirical relationship between corporate governance and firm performance remains a subject of significant debate. In light of Taiwan’s increasing number of listed companies and the introduction of new governance frameworks, this research investigates the impact of corporate governance on the performance of public firms in Taiwan. The study finds that corporate governance significantly influences firm performance, though correlations across variables are not consistently positive. Furthermore, the analysis demonstrates that financial disclosure and transparency have a positive and significant effect on performance. These findings serve as a guide for investors and companies to assess critical governance elements and refine policy development.

Purpose This paper compares and discusses the leading economic roles of China and the USA from a different perspective, that is, in terms of herd spillover to 32 international stock markets. Design/methodology/approach We expand the herding spillover models of Gebka and Wohar (2013) and Lai and Zhang (2020) to encompass all types of herd spillovers, including severe, moderate and anti-herd effects. Findings Our research provides a more precise basis for understanding herd spillover effects in global equity markets. During tranquil periods, the trading patterns of Chinese stocks predominate over those of other regions, whereas the influence of the USA appears less significant. Nonetheless, more substantial evidence of the US market is observed during economic downturns. Throughout the financial crisis, investors in other countries tend to follow their respective trading behaviors in both nations as market uncertainty escalates. In addition, prior findings on herd spillover are underestimated because the model lacks an absolute foreign market return. A total of 76 cases of herd spillover is reported in this study. If severe herd spillover is neglected, we will underestimate it by 35.53%. Research limitations/implications Although beyond the scope of the present study, examining herd spillovers across different investor types as well as distinguishing between intentional and unintentional forms of herding spillover would be of considerable interest. Such analyses could further enhance our understanding of common trading behaviors across global financial markets. We leave these issues for future research. Practical implications These findings suggest that the advantages of international diversification through investments in the USA and China may sometimes be overstated. Additionally, regulators should maintain vigilance in supervising cross-border behavioral channels to ensure market stability. Originality/value We compare and discuss the foremost economic influences of the USA and China on trading behaviors across 32 countries worldwide. Our study is extensive in comparison to other research that concentrates on specific countries or regions. Individual stock data in this paper surpass the industrial index in capturing return dispersion, thereby enabling a more precise inference of herd behavior. In addition to moderate herd spillover, which has been the primary focus of previous research, we also examine severe and anti-herd spillovers to provide a comprehensive understanding of the overall effect.