This paper attempts to apply the vine copulas methodology to assess the interdependence among the exchange rate market, equity indices, precious metals and energy resources within the selected BRICS economies. Using the ARFIMA-GJR-GARCH model, the residuals of the daily returns from foreign exchange rates, precious metals, equity indices, and energy prices of the BRICS economies for the period from January 1, 2003, to August 2023 were filtered. The empirical findings reveal a persistence of shocks and an asymmetric response to positive and negative news. Elevated volatility was observed across equity, precious metals, and energy markets, indicating substantial risks that necessitate robust risk management strategies. The results illustrate the heightened sensitivity of BRICS economies to external shocks, such as the Global Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, which have triggered market volatility across currencies, stock market returns, and energy prices. This study emphasises the crucial importance of diversification, given the strong co-movement among asset classes, particularly during periods of extreme market volatility. Furthermore, the vine copulas analysis reveals intricate co-movements between assets, contributing to enhanced portfolio management strategies. Assets such as oil and gold serve as effective hedges. At the same time, foreign exchange rates play a significant role in investment decisions, underscoring the necessity for meticulous risk assessment and diversification strategies. These findings emphasize the vulnerability of BRICS economies to external shocks and highlight the imperative of effective risk management and diversification in navigating these dynamic markets. • ARFIMA-GJR-GARCH and C/D-vine copulas capture BRICS multi-asset dependence • C-vine fits Brazil, Russia, China; D-vine suits India and South Africa • Silver is central node; lower-tail dependence links silver with BRICS assets. • Oil and gold hedge; weak tau pairs provide diversification • Asymmetric tail risks stress need for volatility-aware BRICS risk management

Purpose This study aims to examine whether the start of Ramadan is associated with abnormal stock market returns across global financial markets and whether these effects vary over time and across different financial conditions. Design/methodology/approach Using daily stock index data from 78 countries for 2006–2025, the study uses an event-study methodology centered on the first trading day of Ramadan. To isolate the direct impact of localized cultural practices, the study attempts to contrast the global aggregate analysis with a dedicated sub-sample of 20 Muslim-majority countries. Abnormal returns (ARs) are calculated using a constant mean return model, and cumulative average abnormal returns (CAARs) are evaluated across multiple event windows. A statistical inference is conducted using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Findings The results show that Ramadan-related ARs are time-varying rather than persistent. While the magnitude and statistical significance of these returns are substantially amplified in Muslim-majority markets, the direction of the effect remains fundamentally state-dependent across all sub-samples. Significant ARs are often observed in pre-event windows, suggesting that investors anticipate events. The magnitude and direction of these effects vary across years and are amplified during periods of financial stress, such as the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 period. Research limitations/implications The analysis relies on aggregate market indices and does not examine firm-level heterogeneity or directly measure behavioral channels such as investor sentiment or liquidity changes. Practical implications The findings highlight the importance of incorporating cultural and religious calendar events into financial risk assessment and portfolio management, particularly during periods of heightened market uncertainty. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study provides the first comprehensive global event-study analysis of Ramadan effects across 78 countries over two decades. It demonstrates that religious calendar effects are conditional, time-varying and shaped by broader financial environments.

ABSTRACT This paper examines the political-economic drivers of federalization and de-federalization, focusing on how historical and institutional factors influence multilevel governance. By comparing the European Union (EU), Switzerland, and the Italian Autonomous Region of Trentino-Alto Adige (TAA), we analyze how multilingual systems manage policy competences across different government levels, especially during crises. Despite differences in size and context, these entities show similar trends in the forces behind federalization and de-federalization. Their multilingual populations and multilevel systems complicate political coordination and administrative structures, with policy competency distributions often driven by political rather than theoretical motivations. We propose that better alignment with political-economic theory could enhance efficiency, accountability at decentralized levels, and institutional resilience during major shocks like the global financial crisis or the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings indicate that Switzerland aligns quite closely with fiscal federalism principles, while the EU shows more inconsistent patterns in this regard, while gradually moving towards a more federal political structure. By comparison, TAA reflects part of (federalizing) EU subnational trends.

Efficiency refers to the performance level corresponding to using minimal inputs to achieve the maximum possible outputs. Despite its importance to the Canadian economy, such performance assessments has rarely been undertaken in the hardware retail industry in recent years. We present the results of a recent study of the relative efficiencies for three major chains of hardware and renovation retail stores operating in Canada (Home Depot, Lowe’s and Rona). We use the classic and bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA) models to measure performance levels over the 22 years from 2000 to 2021. Overall, the firms exhibited high efficiency during this period, and operations management was the primary source of inefficiency. However, an analysis of trends over the 22 years shows that all three companies experienced periods of declining efficiency at the beginning of the study period, followed by a phase of recovery that appears to have accelerated towards the end of the study period. Our longitudinal analysis also indicates that recent shocks and crises have impacted the firms. The succession of crises at the end of the 2000s, the 2007 forestry crisis in Canada, and the 2008 global financial crisis led to the lowest period of efficiency for all the firms, from which they started rebounding in 2011. The specific impact on Rona can explain Lowe’s acquisition of Rona in 2015. However, such a move did not seem to have had a significant improvement beyond accelerating a recovery that had started a few years earlier. This may explain Lowe’s sale of all its Canadian operations in 2022, leading to a new firm called Rona+. Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic also seems to have had a similar effect: accelerating the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis that the firms had started in 2011.

International energy price changes can lead energy-importing economies to adjust their input factor choices, and Korea provides a useful case given its very high dependence on imported primary energies. This study estimates a primary energy input-demand system for Korea using quarterly data from 2000 to 2021, covering coal; crude oil; natural gas; labor; and others, including non-primary energy inputs. Our analysis uses LA-AIDS specifications. Breakpoint unit-root and cointegration tests support structural change around the global financial crisis, and this shift is incorporated through period-specific parameters within a unified demand system. The compensated elasticities indicate that crude oil becomes more price sensitive after the break, while coal and natural gas become less responsive to their own prices. Cross-price relationships also change, with weaker substitution among the primary energies and greater substitution between crude oil and others. These findings suggest that the ability to adjust inputs and the economic effects of international price changes can vary over time, which should be taken into account in energy policy evaluation.

ABSTRACT This study examines the relationship between internationalization and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) controversies, focusing on whether foreign directors on corporate boards influence this relationship. Drawing on resource dependence theory, we argue that internationalization increases ESG controversies due to the complexity of managing diverse regulatory environments and stakeholder expectations. Although foreign directors may contribute valuable global expertise and networks, they can either mitigate or exacerbate these controversies depending on their advising and monitoring capabilities. Using a sample of 5834 firm‐year observations from US companies, we find a positive association between internationalization and ESG controversies. Additionally, foreign directors significantly exacerbate the effect of internationalization on ESG controversies. Our results, which underscore the adverse impact of internationalization and culturally diverse boards on ESG controversies, remain consistent after a battery of sensitivity tests and the addressing of potential endogeneity concerns. Our results are also robust to external shocks, such as the global financial crisis and the COVID‐19 pandemic. This research advances the literature on corporate governance and sustainability, offering practical insights for policymakers and firms on the importance of strategic board composition and effective governance structures for managing ESG risks across global operations.

This study examines the time–frequency dynamics between CO2 emissions and their determinants—oil prices, renewable energy deployment, and climate policy uncertainty—in Türkiye from 1987Q2 to 2024Q1. We integrate a rolling-window Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) model with wavelet coherence analysis to capture evolving asymmetric effects and multi-scale transmission mechanisms. Our findings reveal pronounced, persistent asymmetries. Oil price decreases stimulate CO2 emissions substantially more than equivalent price increases reduce them, yielding a negative asymmetry effect. Renewable energy demonstrates a stable, negative long-run relationship with emissions, with wavelet analysis indicating this effect concentrates over medium-to-long-term horizons, underscoring its structural decarbonization role. Climate policy uncertainty exerts fragmented, episodic influences, disrupting short-to-medium-term emission trajectories. Rolling-window estimates confirm these asymmetric relationships shift markedly around structural breaks, including the 2001 domestic crisis and the 2008 global financial crisis. The study concludes that effective decarbonization requires temporally calibrated policies: counter-cyclical carbon pricing to offset oil price asymmetries, and credible long-term frameworks to sustain renewable energy investments. Methodologically, the results demonstrate the value of combining time-domain and frequency-domain techniques to diagnose complex, evolving interactions in the energy–environment nexus.

Abstract Asset managers, private equity firms and other institutional investors have assumed an increasingly important role in the ownership and management of housing and infrastructure since the Global Financial Crisis. This article analyses how social housing in London is being transformed into a financial asset through an analysis of ‘income strip’ leases, long‐term contractual arrangements between institutional investors and local authorities. Building on insights from urban political economy and the social studies of finance, we explore the moral politics, temporal logics and forms of obligation and risk embedded in these financial arrangements. We situate the rise of income strips within a longer arc of state–market entanglements and argue that they exemplify a recursive and cyclical tendency in the local state's experimentation with private finance. At the level of the contract and the asset, we show how value and risk are distributed and negotiated, and how income strips produce hierarchies of obligation and indebtedness. While institutional investment into social housing is narrated as a ‘common sense’ policy solution that promises to fill the ‘housing gap’ and secure returns for workers’ retirement savings, we show how income strips erode security of tenure, increase rents and entangle states and tenants in new forms of financial obligation, foreclosing alternative political imaginaries.

ABSTRACT Public lead texts from Swiss newspapers contain most of the signal needed to nowcast Swiss GDP growth in real time. I build an indicator from daily topic‐specific sentiment and recession measures extracted from three Swiss newspapers and evaluate it in pseudo‐real time. The indicator is competitive with established Swiss business‐cycle indicators and simple statistical benchmarks once enough within‐quarter news has arrived, and the gains remain after excluding COVID‐19 and the Global Financial Crisis. I then compare three design choices that arise in text‐based nowcasting systems: lead texts versus full articles, keyword‐based scoring versus large‐language‐model classification, and static versus dynamic factor aggregation. None delivers systematic forecast gains over the baseline; the LLM variant is more costly and harder to hold fixed in real time, and the full‐article indicators often perform worse. The main contribution is therefore a design result: in this public‐data setting, lead texts and simple methods already recover most of the useful nowcasting signal.

ABSTRACT We examine how financial uncertainty affects GDP growth-at-risk and its term structure using panel data from developed economies. Results show: (1) financial uncertainty significantly depresses GDP growth, with effects strongest in the short run and fading to near zero after two years; (2) the impact is largest at the 5th percentile, far exceeding effects at the median and 95th percentiles, implying a marked rise in left-tail risk, especially during the 2008 global financial crisis; (3) higher uncertainty shifts the conditional GDP growth distribution left, amplifying downside risks with limited effects on growth potential.

This paper examines China's international capital flows using monthly time series data from January 1997 to May 2023, derived through an indirect calculation method. A Markov Regime Switching Model is employed to categorize capital flows into distinct states and identify abnormal episodes across different periods. The analysis reveals three key phases: the "Period of Stead Development after the Reform and Opening-Up," the "Period from the Global Financial Crisis to the Quantitative Easing Exit," and the "Period of China's New Normal Development." The model accurately identifies significant abnormal episodes, including the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, a Time-Varying Parameter Vector Autoregression (TVP-VAR) model is used to investigate the dynamic impacts of geopolitical risk (GPR) on capital flows. The findings indicate that GPR exerts varied effects under different economic conditions, with its influence being predominantly short-term after the global financial crisis but more pronounced and far-reaching in the post-COVID era. The direction of GPR's impact depends on the stage of economic development. Moreover, the effects of the interest rate spread (IRS) and the real effective exchange rate (REER) exhibit structural changes, with REER emerging as a consistently stronger and more significant factor in the post-COVID period.

ABSTRACT Research attention has been focused on exhausting the reasons for the decline in the UK’s productivity growth rates since the global financial crisis in 2008. This paper aims to contribute to the debate by adopting a more refined spatial perspective to unravel local variations in labour productivity (GVA per hour worked) with GeoAI analysis. Machine learning approaches, combined with Explainable AI techniques, are used to identify key factors underpinning spatial variations and their interactive relationships across different spatial scales. The analysis focuses on exploring the dynamics of labour productivity in local and metropolitan areas in England between 2010 and 2022.

Food insecurity, when individuals do not have sufficient access to food, has rapidly increased in high-income countries (HICs) since the 2008 global financial crisis. Women are particularly at risk of experiencing food insecurity, and during pregnancy, this can have detrimental physical and emotional health implications. To synthesise qualitative research exploring pregnant women's experiences of food insecurity in HICs (PROSPERO 2023 CRD42023404774). Systematic review of qualitative literature reporting data on women's experiences of food insecurity. Six databases (MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, CINAHL, ASSIA, Scopus) and grey literature sources were searched, followed by forwards and backwards citation chaining for all included studies. Screening of titles, abstracts and full-texts, data extractions and quality appraisals (using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) Qualitative Studies Checklist) were completed in duplicate. Certainty in the evidence was evaluated using GRADE-CERQual. Food-insecure pregnant and postnatal women, in HICs, since the global financial crisis of 2008. Experiences of food insecurity during pregnancy. Thematic synthesis using NVivo14 to code data. Hand-drawn thematic maps were used to group codes into sub-themes and overarching themes. Coding and hand-drawn thematic maps were combined to create a final visual summary of analytical themes. Searches resulted in 32,685 studies, and 32 were included (n = 20 North America, n = 10 Europe, n = 2 Australia). Findings identified three overarching themes: (1) barriers in access to food, (2) impact on physical and mental health, and (3) established individual, informal and statutory coping strategies. Women frequently discussed barriers to accessing fresh fruit and vegetables, resulting in poorer quality diets. Whilst qualitative data extracted precluded any direct pregnancy versus pre-pregnancy comparison, pregnancy appeared to exacerbate the experiences of food insecurity for women. The future arrival of a newborn created additional financial concerns along with worries over nutritional needs. Reliance on others was a recurrent strategy for pregnant women to mitigate the impact of food insecurity. The GRADE CERQual assessment showed moderate to high confidence in all findings. The findings of this qualitative review-the first to focus on experiences of food insecurity during pregnancy across HICs-show that women are experiencing substantial impacts from food insecurity during this critical life course stage. Review findings emphasise the need for co-ordinated screening and interventions that aim to support women to mitigate the impacts of food insecurity and its underlying causes to improve postpartum health and wellbeing.

Physical and transition climate risks and financial risk predictability in the US banking sector

ABSTRACT This paper examines the bidirectional relationship between competition and systemic risk in dual financial systems where Islamic and conventional financial institutions operate side by side. Using a sample of publicly listed financial institutions from the Asia‐Pacific, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions from 2000 to 2019, we estimate systemic risk through ΔCoVaR and competition using the Lerner index. Employing a panel vector autoregressive framework, we analyse how this relationship evolves across different economic phases, with particular focus on the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). We find that lower competition is consistently associated with reduced systemic risk, with this effect being stronger—by approximately 25%—in conventional financial institutions. Notably, the competition–risk relationship is asymmetric and time‐varying. Put simply, competition enhances stability pre‐crisis; it amplifies systemic risk during the GFC, especially in the conventional sector. Post‐crisis, this fragility effect persists in conventional institutions but dissipates in Islamic ones. Our findings contribute to the literature on competition, systemic risk, and comparative banking by highlighting how alternative financial models and economic conditions jointly shape financial stability.

ABSTRACT This study employs a diffusion index model to re-measure China’s inflation uncertainty and evaluate its macro effects from both real and financial perspectives from June 2006 to February 2025. We find that inflation uncertainty in China surges following major shocks, including the Global Financial Crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic and recent geopolitical conflicts. Empirically, heightened uncertainty produces a ‘stagflation-like’ effect, simultaneously restraining real economic activity and elevating inflation. In financial markets, it induces coordinated tightening: raising interest rates, depreciating the currency, and depressing bond and equity prices. These findings provide both a refined methodological framework for monitoring inflation uncertainty and valuable insights for policymakers seeking to maintain macroeconomic stability amid complex shocks.

This study analyzes the impacts of signed international environmental agreements on carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions for the period 1990-2023 in the context of the G-7 countries. The main objective of the study is to reveal the structural transformations in emission trends resulting from the regulations developed within the framework of international environmental agreements, particularly the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. The dates of regime shifts in the emission series were determined using the Bai-Perron multiple structural break test. The findings indicate that significant breaks occurred during the Kyoto negotiations and implementation period (1997-2005) and after the Paris Agreement (2015-2017). In addition, economic shocks such as the global financial crisis and the European debt crisis have also affected the effectiveness of environmental policy implementation. Environmental agreements have been partially successful in reducing absolute emissions in the G-7 countries. Their share of total emissions decreased from 40% in 1990 to 20% in 2023. However, differences persist across countries, and the weak binding nature of mechanisms based on flexible commitments leads to varying outcomes in emissions reductions. In this context, the study emphasizes the decisive role of environmental agreements in shaping global emissions policies. It also highlights the need for stronger monitoring mechanisms in the future.

Banks are fundamental to economic growth, yet their profitability remains intrinsically linked to the efficacy of their credit risk management (CRM). History, from the 2008 global financial crisis to recent high-profile failures like Silicon Valley Bank (2023) and Investrust Bank (2024), underscores that weak CRM can destabilize institutions and erode financial performance. This study examines the impact of CRM practices on the profitability of Indo-Zambia Bank, employing an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design. Quantitative analysis of financial records and staff perceptions was integrated with qualitative insights from bank personnel to provide a holistic assessment. The findings reveal a significant positive relationship between effective CRM and profitability, with the integrated CRM lifecycle, particularly monitoring and recovery, emerging as the strongest predictor. While the bank operates within a structurally sound CRM framework, its performance is mediated by critical implementation gaps, including deficiencies in staff training and inconsistent monitoring practices. Furthermore, the bank's non-performing loan (NPL) trajectory, although below the industry average, mirrors troubling sector-wide trends, suggesting that systemic challenges can potentially overwhelm internal controls. The study concludes that translating a robust risk framework into sustained profitability requires a strategic shift from policy design to operationally seamless execution. It offers actionable recommendations for strengthening post-approval monitoring, investing in early-warning technologies, and enhancing recovery mechanisms to fortify the bank's financial resilience.

Abstract Economically motivated entrepreneurship is argued to contribute to society by creating economic growth and jobs, while socially and environmentally motivated entrepreneurship is positioned as a way of addressing societal needs. We relate this heterogeneity in entrepreneurs’ motivations to growth expectations and ask whether the effects of these motivations differ under conditions of adversity, specifically in the context of an economic crisis. We argue that during an economic crisis, socially and environmentally motivated entrepreneurs may expect to grow, in contrast to economically motivated entrepreneurs who often scale back their growth expectations in times of adversity. We test our predictions in multilevel analyses of data from 5605 entrepreneurs across 48 countries collected during the Global Financial Crisis. We find that socially and environmentally motivated entrepreneurs had higher growth expectations than economically motivated entrepreneurs. These relationships were mediated by lower perceived market competition. For environmentally motivated entrepreneurs, higher opportunity perception also acted as a mediating mechanism. By bridging research on growth expectations with research on social and environmental entrepreneurship, our study contributes new insights to both streams of research. It also contributes to entrepreneurship research on crises and adversity by highlighting how motivations shape entrepreneurs’ responses to crises and by unpacking the individual-level cognitive mechanisms involved.

ABSTRACT The Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia has gained prominence in Middle Eastern and global markets through high-profile projects such as the futuristic city of Neom and the acquisition of English football club Newcastle United. These initiatives have drawn international attention to the PIF’s expanding scale and scope of activities, prompting debates over market distortions abroad and governance, accountability, and social justice at home. Similar apprehensions also surround newer sovereign wealth funds, such as Kazakhstan’s Samruk-Kazyna and Malaysia’s Sarawak Sovereign Wealth Future Fund, concerning the extent to which home-country geopolitical considerations may shape their overseas investments. Examining case material on the PIF, Samruk-Kazyna, and the Sarawak Sovereign Wealth Future Fund, this paper argues that the rise of these funds since the 2008 global financial crisis has signalled increased willingness and capacity of governments to intervene in their economies. It further argues that, despite those states’ role in directing national and international investment strategies, these funds primarily serve domestic political and economic objectives rather than any coherent geopolitical ambitions: for Saudi Arabia, the PIF is closely intertwined with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s domestic political agenda; for the other two funds, they focus on strengthening national capacity for economic resilience.