We study the financial determinants of cash holdings and discuss the importance of firm size in the post-crisis period. We employ panel data regression analysis on a sample of 6629 non-financial and non-utility listed companies in the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2018. We focus on the comparative analysis of large, medium, and small size firms in terms of cash holdings. Our findings indicate that cash levels are higher for firms with riskier cash flows, more growth opportunities, and higher R&D expenditures. In contrast, the firms’ cash holdings decrease when the substitutes of cash, cash flows, and capital expenditures increase. We show that small-sized firms tend to hold more cash than their larger counterparts due to precautionary motives. Further, we confirm a significant and varying association between managerial ownership and cash holdings. The study is robust to different regression specifications, additional analyses, and endogeneity tests. Overall, we add to the prior literature by identifying the effect of firm-level attributes and governance characteristics on cash policy during the post-crisis period. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first work that provides insights on the way that firm characteristics impact cash holdings, considering the differences among firm size groupings.

This paper presents an analysis of the factors affecting foreign direct investments, focusing on governance quality and adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards on countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which are a special case of study due to their idiosyncratic characteristics, rich natural resources and geographical position. Panel data analysis was conducted, implementing three different models (Fixed Effect, Random Effect, and Arellano Bond Dynamic Model). The results show that the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards is a strong determinant that promotes foreign direct investments. As regards the governance quality, the block of Gulf Cooperation Council countries has fulfilled the minimum level of governance pre-conditions relative to foreign direct investments. In addition, governance indicators associated with law, rules, and corruption are more influential determinants for foreign direct investments.

In this study we examine the relationship between corporate green bonds and commodities (both perishable & non-perishable) that attracts very little attention in relative literature. For the first time, we investigate a long-term relationship between green bonds and commodities including a significantly higher number of commodities and observations. Furthermore, we adopt a novel methodology, the VaR (value at risk) based copulas, to describe the asymmetric risk spillover between green bonds and commodities by considering the asymmetric tail distribution. Our results reveal an insignificant risk spillover effect from commodity market uncertainty. Further, we found non-perishable commodities are transmitting risk to perishable commodities (barring lead). In addition, in contrast to other similar studies the risk spillover is comparatively higher regarding lead, gold, and agriculture commodities as against copper and silver. On the other hand, energy commodities have the least spillover effect. Finally, these results have several important implications for investors as well as for policymakers.

We studied (i) the volatility feedback effect, defined as the relationship between contemporaneous returns and the market-based volatility, and (ii) the leverage effect, defined as the relationship between lagged returns and the current market-based volatility. For our analysis, we used daily measures of volatility estimated from high frequency data to explain volatility changes over time for both the S&P500 and FTSE100 indices. The period of analysis spanned from January 2000 to June 2017 incorporating various market phases, such as booms and crashes. Based on the estimated regressions, we found evidence that the returns of S&P500 and FTSE100 indices were well explained by a specific group of realized measure estimators, and the returns negatively affected realized volatility. These results are highly recommended to financial analysts dealing with high frequency data and volatility modelling.

The purpose of this paper, in contrast to other studies, is to examine an indirect relationship in terms of the effect of income inequality with stock market development in countries South of the Euro-zone during the period 2002-2013. The author adopts a new econometric method, the Improved Augmented Regression Method, to obtain bias-reduced and stationary-corrected estimators. The results reveal a negative relationship that puts into doubt the recovery of growth. The new econometric methodology leads to a novel suggested policy on the need for reforms adopting a low-income tax rate system and reinforcement of export-oriented productivity. This conclusion is strengthened by the respective relationship in USA.

The present research investigates the impact of trading volume on stock return volatility using data from the Greek banking system. For our analysis, the empirical study uses daily measures of volatility constructed from intraday data for the period 5 January 2001–30 December 2020. This period includes several market phases, such as the latest financial crisis, the European sovereign debt crisis and enforcement of restrictions on transactions owing to capital controls on the Athens Stock Exchange in June 2015. Based on the estimated quantile regressions, we find evidence of a direct impact of the trading volume on stock return volatility mainly in all quantiles. The findings extrapolated are of relevance and interest to financial (banking) analysts, policy makers and practitioners concerned with intraday data and volatility modeling.