The purpose of this study is to investigate the asymmetric effects of economic policy uncertainty (EPU), geopolitical risk (GPR), and market sentiment (VIX) on European Union (EU) stocks by sectors of economic activity. The design and methodological approach of our research are rooted in parametric and nonparametric quantile-based techniques. We employ monthly data covering eleven sectors of economic activity in addition to GPR, Global EPU, European Union EPU, United States EPU, and VIX. Our dataset covers the period between February 2013 and September 2022. Our findings show a generally low predictive power of the considered EPU measures on the stock returns of the EU sectors. Notwithstanding, the analysis reveals that EPU from the EU has the highest predictive ability on the EU sectoral stock returns while EPU from the US has no significant predictive ability on the stock returns from the EU. Our findings also highlight the asymmetric effects of various EPUs on EU stocks. Moreover, certain sectoral exposure to EU stocks, found to serve just as diversifiers in normal market conditions, could become a hedge and safe-haven against GPR in extreme economic conditions. Our findings also highlight the role of the VIX as a good gauge to hedge against the downside risks of the EU stocks. The originality of our work is two-fold. First, we extend the study of how global factors influence the EU stock market to the most recent period including the Russia–Ukraine conflict. Second, we perform this study on a sectoral basis. Therefore, the value of our findings is that they provide notable implications for market regulation and portfolio management.

The role of sustainable development in the export intensity of small and medium‐size enterprises (SMEs) represents an open research question. We consider sustainable development through the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) dimensions as well as via firms’ innovative activity indicators. Our objective is to reveal the sustainability determinants of export intensity of SMEs in emerging markets subject to financial constraints, which is one of the major obstacles for SMEs. Our sample is based on the 2018–2020 Business Environment Enterprise Performance Survey data. The Heckman model allows us to reveal the factors relevant for SMEs to gain access to foreign markets under the control of financial constraints specific for SMEs. We also analyze the determinants of the SMEs’ share of direct exports in revenue. Our results demonstrate that innovative activity and corporate social responsibility facilitate entry to foreign markets, while equity concentration is a major deterrent. In particular, we reveal a significant positive effect of research and development investment on export intensity. Our findings highlight the complex nature of the interrelations between the SMEs’ share of direct exports in revenue and ESG consciousness. We find that other significant factors are political links of the top management, the gender composition of production and administrative units, employee training facilities, and ownership structure.

We study 2001–2020 flight-to-quality episodes encompassing two planetary-scale crises: the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007–2008 and the coronavirus-triggered global meltdown. We focus on time-frequency lead-lag nexuses between holding emerging market (EM) debt and investing in relatively risk-free US Treasuries. Wavelet coherency along with the phase-difference approach is used. Our results reveal varying lead-lag patterns and low-coherence zones between EM bonds and US Treasuries, which imply the existence of appealing diversification attributes. The flights-to-quality during the crisis periods, such as the GFC and COVID-19 pandemic, emphasize the safe-haven characteristics of US Treasures. They also evidence that the post-Covid tightening of credit spreads to the pre-crisis levels is faster than the post-GFC recovery. We demonstrate that for EM debt investors, the US Treasury market allows for dynamic risk mitigation strategies during both global crises.