Financial performance is an indicator of the financial stability and the health of a firm. It is a measure of how well a firm uses its assets to generate revenues, a firm’s credibility, and its ability to pay off debts. To study the theoretical development, empirical examinations, and growing trend of financial performance research, this study reviewed the financial performance literature based on 875 journal articles sourced from the Web of Science, ACM, and Scopus databases from 2005 to 2019. To carry out the review, we applied Cite Space and Ucinet software for visualization and social network analysis, statistical analysis, co-occurrence analysis, and other research methods. We obtained a panoramic depiction of the posts, authors, journals, and keywords, and also reviewed financial performance using the field of knowledge maps. Accordingly, this study highlighted the recent and future research trends, and found that corporate social responsibility, and the green and sustainable corporate environment are potential research areas. These findings, through the combination of bibliometric methods and a systematic review, provide a better understanding of the development of corporate financial performance for both researchers and practitioners.

In this study, we examine an empirical relationship between stock market volatility with the exchange rate and gold prices of an emerging market, “Pakistan”, employing daily and monthly data (PSX-100 Index) covering from 2001: Q3 to 2018: Q2. The study explains the average stock returns by applying MGARCH. Further, it investigates that the volatility in the exchange rate (Rs/US $) and gold prices remain equally strong in bearish and bullish conditions of the stock market by using a quantile regression approach (2001–2018). Additionally, the sample period is divided into two split samples that cover (2001–2007) and (2008–2018) respectively, based on global financial crises and applied similar analysis. The overall results show the negative impact of the exchange rate and gold price volatility on the stock market performance daily (monthly), supporting the argument that the stock market considers the exchange rate and gold price fluctuations as an adverse indicator and reacts negatively.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are the key to the economic and social development of a country. However, the recent advancements of higher education institutions’ universities in China have become a pivotal factor contributing to their swift growth. Considering the impact of the external environment, applying a three-stage data-envelopment analysis (DEA) and the Malmquist index method, we evaluated the static and dynamic efficiency of input–output data of scientific research produced by universities directly under the Ministry of Education in the period of 2010 to 2017. Results showed that the three stage DEA model is more accurate than the traditional DEA method for measuring the efficiency of scientific research input and universities’ output. The overall efficiency of universities’ scientific research activities increased at an average annual rate of 3.7% from 2010 to 2017. Further analysis showed that the optimization of the scale was the primary internal factor able to promote the efficiency of scientific research in universities. Technological progress slightly diminishes the efficiency of scientific research in universities, which should, therefore, take measures to improve pure technical efficiency to enlarge the scale of their scientific research according to the characteristics of scientific research efficiency. Such steps will strengthen internal motivation towards scientific research efficiency in universities.