International Journal of Finance & Economics最新文献

We revisit the tourism-led growth hypothesis by utilising a panel set of 108 countries over the period 1996–2017. We quantify the effects of tourism on the entire conditional distribution of economic growth for both relatively poor and relatively rich countries within a panel quantile regression framework. We address the unobserved heterogeneity and potential endogeneity concerns. We reveal that the lower the conditional growth rate a country experiences the more important is tourism development for the conditional growth distribution for both developing and developed countries. The size of the effect in developed countries is twice as high as in developing ones. On the other hand, tourism specialisation is beneficial only at higher quantiles of the conditional growth distribution and only for developed countries. On the contrary, it brings about an undesirable effect in developing countries. Finally, we examine the impact of a reduction in tourism activity on economic growth due to an exogenous shock (i.e., COVID-19). Simulation analysis based on the quantile regression estimates shows that countries facing relatively low growth rates conditionally to the growth distribution are affected the most. Policymakers may consider the importance of tourism activity in the growth process and formulate strategies that align with the growth experience of each country.

Despite expecting countries to rely on welfare measures in the aftermath of financial crises, one should not ignore the possibility of fiscal retrenchments due to the constraints that those crises may bring. This article analyses that issue by assessing the impact of financial crises on governmental social spending and its components (healthcare, education and social protection) using a panel of 108 countries from 1991 to 2019. An important contribution of this study is that it assesses the effects of different types of financial crises (banking, currency and debt) in addition to distinguishing between developed and developing countries. The findings indicate that while developed countries neutralise the adverse effects of crises by increasing social spending, developing countries tend to shrink outlays—in particular healthcare and social protection—when financial crises strike, despite the associated negative consequences on human and social well-being. Moreover, debt crises proved to be more detrimental to social spending than banking and currency crises in developing countries. An important policy implication arising from our analysis is that governments should maintain a high level of fiscal balance in normal times to be able to finance welfare state expansion programmes during periods of financial crises, especially in emerging/developing countries.

We implement a two-stage methodology based on the structural vector autoregressive and time-varying parameter vector autoregressive models to examine the time-varying effect of distinct types of oil-price shocks on sovereign credit risks measured by credit default swap (CDS) spreads in Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Using monthly data for the period from May 2011 to February 2022, our results show time-varying responses to structural oil shocks in the short- and medium-run periods, with more fluctuations in responses detected over the full sample period in the former. Overall, we detect a break in the contagious impacts of oil shocks during and in the aftermath of, the 2014–2015 oil crisis and COVID-19 crisis. Specifically, the Bahraini market is found to exhibit a positive (negative) reaction to the oil supply shocks (OS) and oil market-specific demand shocks (OSD) throughout the pandemic period. Furthermore, we uncover a transient response from the Saudi and Qatari CDS spreads to the aggregate demand shocks (ADS) and the OSD over the full sample period, indicating the need for portfolio rebalancing. In the UAE, we detect a positive impact over the three sampled years of OSD since 2011. Moreover, a notable decoupling pattern continues to appear between short- and medium-term innovations in the ADS. Our results suggest adopting more conservative trading in the CDS markets while understanding the oil price and the economic state. The complexity of the trading strategy should also depend on the target Gulf market itself and that seems essential when it comes to investing in Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented demand and supply shock to the world economies. To understand its impact on corporate prices, we define a partial equilibrium model where non-financial corporations operating in three sectors (suppliers, end-producers and service providers) optimize their production under monopolistic competition and are subject to demand and supply shocks of different intensities. Our model confirms that when the demand shock dominates, prices tend to decrease. We then introduce data from the COVID-19 pandemic in the European Union into our model and find that prices are expected to fall in the most acute phase of the pandemic, when lockdowns and similar health measures decrease demand, and to increase later as a result of tensions in the supply of intermediate goods and of the persistence of the supply shock. Inventories could play a decisive role in avoiding price increases in the moderate phase of the pandemic. In the post-pandemic period, higher prices may continue for a time until the shock to suppliers vanishes. These are relevant insights on the macroeconomic impact of worldwide pandemics, also considering the current macroeconomic environment.

We study the relationship between finance and growth using a sample of 275 Chinese cities from 2009 to 2018. We exclude bank loans to local governments through the local government financing vehicles (LGFVs) and construct a better financial development index which measures the level of loans extended by banks to enterprises and households. We find that financial development in the form of a higher loan-to-GDP ratio leads to lower economic growth. This negative relationship between finance and growth may be attributed to various mechanisms, including discrimination in bank lending, housing market bubbles, and an imbalance in growth between real and financial sectors.

We examine the relationship between economic policy uncertainty and the release of climate change-related information as a representation of non-financial information. We argue that firms are likely to disclose their climate change-related information to gain ethical legitimacy, especially during uncertain times. Using the policy uncertainty measure from Baker, Bloom, and Davis (2016) and an extensive dataset from the CSRwire platform, we provide strong evidence that policy uncertainty is positively associated with releasing climate change-related news. Our findings are robust to alternative measures of policy uncertainty and when controlling for endogeneity. In a set of additional analyses, we show that the industries within which firms operate and their environmental performance are channels that explain the release of climate-related information. Taken together, our results highlight the role that climate change-related information may play in providing firms with ethical legitimacy and building trust among all stakeholders in times of political uncertainty.

We address the scarcity of empirical research on Shariah Compliance Disclosure (hereafter referred to as SCD) by presenting new evidence on the levels and range of SCD, of 807 bank-year observation of Islamic Financial Institutions (hereafter referred to as IFIs) in 19 countries for the period from 2010 to 2020 and its determinants. Using an unweighted disclosure index measured by manual content analysis categorized into Shariah Supervisory Board (hereafter referred to as SSB) information, audit process, Shariah compliance review and Zakat, several outcomes are documented. In general, the SCD level is above average (57.38%) and hence evidence an overall growth during the sample period. Further, the study examines the relationship between corporate governance (CG) and SCD and the results indicate that foreign investors, institutional investors, board size, board independence, SSB reputation and SSB size are vital and influence the extent of SCD level. The study also conducted several tests to examine the main findings' robustness. The findings deliver valuable in-depth empirical insights to regulatory bodies on the current SCD practises of IFIs to assist policymakers in modifying reporting frameworks or guidelines accordingly. In addition, this research can support academics, policymakers or standard setters and managers interested in seeking information about SCD and CG.