Crisis and environmental governance decisions amidst the COVID-19 pandemic: Lessons from European countries.

This study investigates the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis on environmental governance decisions within publicly listed European companies. It utilizes a comprehensive analysis of publicly available data regarding these firms and check the environmental governance practices during the pandemic, informed by risk society theory which describes modern societies marked by ongoing risks and uncertainties primarily stemming from technological and scientific advancements. The regression and robustness analysis has been performed on how companies have responded to the crisis, specifically in terms of their approaches to environmental sustainability and governance. Covid-19 has a significantly positive impact on environmental governance (EG), with a coefficient of 18.73 and a p-value of .000. Other variables like human development (HD), size, and free cash flow (FCF) positively affect EG, while corruption (Corrupt) and leverage (Lev) have a negative influence. Robust analysis confirms the negative impact of Covid-19 on EG, with a coefficient of 18.46 and a p-value below .01, consistent across different subsamples. However, it also underscores the challenges companies have encountered in upholding their sustainability efforts amid the crisis. In sum, this research offers valuable insights into how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected environmental governance decisions, with potential implications for policymakers, regulators, and business leaders striving to advance sustainability in the post-pandemic landscape.

Do natural resources affect environmental quality in MINT Economies? The role of tourism and financial development.

With the growing nature of the ecological footprint, research studies focus on exploring new determinants of environmental degradation. Moreover, the role of natural resources and energy consumption in environmental quality has gained much attention in the literature. However, tourism raises the demand for energy consumption and extraction of natural resources. This research study investigates the influence of natural resources, tourism, and renewable energy in MINT countries, using novel Cross-Sectional Auto Regressive Distributive Lag (CS-ARDL) methodological techniques and employing yearly data from 1995 to 2018. The study also applied recently developed Kónya (Econ Model 23:978-992, 2006) causality to identify the causal relationship between the variables of the heterogenous panel. The result shows that tourism, natural resources, and economic growth are positively associated with the ecological footprint in the long-run. However, renewable energy consumption negatively impacts ecological footprint in both in short-run and the long-run. Further, the study explored a bidirectional causality between economic growth and ecological footprint in MINT countries. Finally, based on the empirical results, the study recommends that the authorities in MINT countries revisit their tourism, natural resources, and economic activities policies to enhance the environmental quality and reduce the ecological footprint.

Investigating the financial market development and shadow economy nexus in the presence of country risk in an emerging economy.

This research study examined the influence of financial market development on the shadow economy and the moderating effect of country risk (political, economic, and financial) in this nexus in Pakistan. Using data from 1995 to 2018, the study applied the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and Phillips-Perron (PP) unit root tests, followed by the F-bounds test to investigate stationarity and cointegration in the series, respectively. The study utilized the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach to estimate the long-run relationship, and to examine the possible causal relationship among the variables, the study employed Breitung and Candelon's (2006) spectral test. The study identified that financial market development is negative, and the country's risk determinants are positively associated with the shadow economy's size. Moreover, the study found that country risk positively moderates the influence of financial market development on the shadow economy. The results also highlighted a unidirectional relationship from economic and financial risk towards the shadow economy. Finally, based on the empirical findings, the study recommends some policy implications to the regulators of financial markets and the shadow economy.