Using behavioral factors (mood, overconfidence, underreaction, overreaction, and herding behavior) as proxy variables in the Vietnamese stock market, this article tries to explore the link between investor demographics (gender, age, experience, and educational ability) and their investment decisions. This study compiles information from a structured questionnaire survey of 400 local, international, institutional, and individual investors in Vietnam. It employed partial multiple regression to examine how investors' demographic variables affected their investment choices using behavioral traits as mediator variables. According to the results, investor emotion, overconfidence, over/underreaction, and herd behavior all have a large impact on investing decisions. Additionally, investors' investing selections are significantly and favorably influenced by their age, gender, and degree of education. Although experience does not have a significant effect on financial decisions, investors start to ignore emotional aspects as they become more experienced.

The energy sector in Vietnam has developed rapidly as the country is transitioning to renewable energy. Moreover, the Vietnamese government also motivates the engagement of private investors in the energy sector to enhance the competitiveness of the energy market. Therefore, this paper investigates how innovation investments and ownership concentration affect the financial sustainability of energy companies in Vietnam. We employ the Fixed Effect Model and Generalized Method of Moments estimations to analyze the sample, including 600 firm-year observations of 103 energy companies from January 2007 to December 2020. The empirical findings show that innovations and block-holders support firms to grow sustainably. The positive relationship between innovation investments and financial sustainability is robust even when we employ alternative proxies of innovation investments. Our study indicates that block-ownership affects sustainable developments of smaller energy firms, while innovation investments significantly improve the sustainability of larger energy firms. Finally, our study reports that the Covid-19 pandemic adversely affects the financial sustainability of energy firms. Our findings align with agency theory, resource-based theory, and prior literature. Our findings recommend that energy firms motivate innovation investments such as training and R&D activities to grow sustainably. In addition, the Vietnamese government should encourage small energy firms to attract blockholders to improve financial sustainability.

This study examines the impacts of investor sentiment and liquidity on the idiosyncratic volatility (IVOL) anomaly returns in Vietnam before and during the COVID-19. We construct an internet search-based measure of sentiment (FEARS) from the Google Trends Search Volume Index of Vietnam’s financial and economic search terms from December 2010 to December 2020. We employ Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) regressions and univariate portfolio testing to examine the existence of IVOL anomaly in Vietnam after controlling for FEARS sentiment index and liquidity proxies. Our findings document the persistence of the IVOL anomaly in the Vietnam stock market before the pandemic. However, the IVOL anomaly disappears during the pandemic. In addition, increasing investor fear sentiment reduces stock returns during the pandemic. Our robustness tests indicate that the IVOL anomaly persists in the high FEARS, low FEARS, and high turnover subsample before the pandemic. Our results contribute new evidence of how the FEARS index and liquidity help explain the IVOL puzzle before and during the pandemic. Our findings align with the trade-off theory, the efficient market theory, the attention-driven theory, and prior literature.

This paper investigates the interconnection between Chief Executive Officer (CEO) power, green credit, and core competence of commercial banks in Vietnam. Our data sample consists of 373 annual observations from 2010 to 2021. We employ a dynamic system Generalized Method of Moments to analyze an unbalanced panel comprised of 373 annual observations from 2010 to 2021. The findings indicate an inverse U-shape relationship between CEO overpower and commercial banks' core competence. Moreover, the study reports that banks with green lending activities reduce core competence by about 0.1598 points more than other banks. In addition, the results indicate that CEO power moderates the relationship between green credit and core competence. Our findings align with stewardship, management entrenchment, first-mover advantage, stakeholder theories, and prior literature. The study has practical implications for policymakers to develop the banking system sustainably in emerging markets.