In developing countries, women’s empowerment is a major concern. Several efforts were made to tackle this issue as the aims of poverty reduction and development cannot be achieved without giving attention to women’s empowerment. Over the past decades, microfinance institutions (MFIs) have appeared as crucial tools not only to address the issue of poverty but also particularly to empower women. Resultantly, a huge number of studies focus on the relationships between MFI and women empowerment. However, in the context of rural areas of Pakistan, the research is limited. Therefore, the objective of this study is to investigate the role of MFI in women’s empowerment in Pakistan so that the research will facilitate MFIs and policymakers in strengthening the link between MFIs and women entrepreneurship. We have used a qualitative methodology, using primary data collected through in-depth interviews and a focus group discussion with six female borrowers of Rural Community Development Programs (RCDP). The empirical results provide valuable insights into the efforts made by RCDP to empower women and combat poverty by encouraging women’s entrepreneurship. Hence, this paper not only examines empowerment, which women are attaining from microfinance but also assists MFIs to know about their significance in developing the economy. The paper is significant for MFI practitioners to develop policies for boosting women’s entrepreneurship and to help their existing women clients with efficient training and supervision.

The wave of global financial crises (2008–2009) caused a surge in the capital flows of developed countries particularly, between developed and developing countries. The crunch hit all financial sectors with unanticipated severity. The study evaluates the role of a country’s political practices in moderating the impact of global financial crunch on microfinance performance. Using the fixed effect panel regression method on the dataset comprising of 95 MFIs operating in South Asia from 2003 to 2012, we determine that microfinance operational capability shares a positive relationship with the institutional attributes of a country and our output reveals that impact of country’s political practices is pervasive on the financial output of MFIs, liable to different levels of implementation. The findings further reveals that MFIs situated in countries having vigorous political practices are less severely affected by the economic crunch.

This study examines the adaptive market hypothesis (AMH) in relation to time-varying market efficiency by using three tests, namely Generalized Spectral (GS), Dominguez-Lobato (DL) and the automatic portmanteau test (AP) test on four-digital currencies; Bitcoin, Monaro, Litecoin, and Steller over the sample period of 2014–2018. The study applies Jarque-Bera test, ADF test, Ljung-Box statistics and ARCH-LM test for testing normality of returns, stationarity of series, serial correlation and volatility clustering in returns and squared returns of selected cryptocurrencies. Further, the study adopts an extremely important category of martingale difference hypothesis (MDH), which uses non-linear methods of dependencies for identifying changing linear and non-linear dependence in the price movement of currencies. The results indicate that price movements with linear and nonlinear dependences varies over time. Our tests also reveal that Bitcoin, Monaro and Litecoin have the longest efficiency periods. While Steller shows the longest inefficient market period. In view of varying market conditions, the results indicate that different market periods have significant impact on prices fluctuations of cryptocurrencies. Therefore, our findings suggest implementing the adaptive market hypothesis (AMH) as predicting changes in cryptocurrency prices over time must consider the time-varying market conditions for efficient forecasting.

Coordinating and managing the contradictions among the environment, resources and economy is an urgent problem in China. Based on the panel data of 30 provinces and cities in China from 2004 to 2017, this paper empirically studies the impact of environmental regulation on China's high-quality economic development and the mediating effect mechanism through the spatial Durbin model and threshold model. The results show that China's high-quality economic development shows a fluctuating upward trend, and the east is higher than the middle and west. Environmental regulation significantly inhibits high-quality economic development, but its impact is moderated by accelerating industrial upgrading, promoting technological innovation, and enhancing foreign direct investment. As the primary driving force, technological innovation has a significant spatial spillover effect. The results show that industrial upgrading has no threshold effect, and technological innovation and foreign direct investment have the characteristics of a ‘U’ single threshold.

Provincial connectivity and growth are connected to visualization of mutual progress and economic development. This is the viewpoint behind the establishment of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Developing new transport infrastructure, Gwadar Port Projects and several energy generating projects, are one of the key projects of CPEC, “All Weather Strategic Friendship” is therefore proved for Pakistan and China. China’s pilot project of “Belt and Road Initiative” is the key plan, which led to the development of CPEC. It is expected from CPEC that it will reduce the transportation cost of China by providing a shorter route for China’s trade to Persian Gulf and it will provide a solution to the energy shortfalls in Pakistan. Moreover, CPEC’s projected prospects of economic advancement, there are some economic, security and political threats in Pakistan. This paper proposes to illuminate the significant Geo-strategic importance, opportunities and challenges for China Pakistan Economic Corridor, and it envisages to broaden the base, by including energy rich, Tajikistan economic role model Turkey and strategically located Iran. Hence, this paper provides a holistic view of previous researches on the planned subject and is not involving any data analysis as existing researches had used for analyzing a review of prospects and challenges.

Innovation ambidexterity is equivocal and this concept holds a significant position in the literature of strategic entrepreneurship as it binds together the crucial dimensions of organisational learning theory. Ambidexterity is recognised as a source for achieving higher levels of firm performance; however, scholars left a gap in examining how innovation ambidexterity is achieved, particularly so in startups. Therefore, this study investigates how a balance between exploratory and exploitative innovations can lead towards better startup performance under the moderating effects of absorptive capacity and environmental dynamism. This is a cross-sectional empirical research on young incubating technology startups and the data were analysed using partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). Our results highlight that innovation ambidexterity plays a crucial role in achieving better startup performance. This research contributes to the ambidexterity literature by providing quantitative evidence at a large scale, delineating the procedure through which entrepreneurs can achieve innovation ambidexterity. The research enriches the organisational learning theory by providing a more inclusive understanding of innovation ambidexterity concept.