This article analyses the Polish banking sector’s involvement with sustainable development through a multidimensional evaluation applying the technique for order preference by similarity ideal solution (TOPSIS) method with different weight vectors. Our results highlight numerous shortcomings in the sustainability performance of commercial banking activities. In fact, there was backsliding during the analysed period (2015–2017), which suggests that supporting sustainability performance was not one of the priorities of the Polish banking sector. However, we found a dichotomy between national and foreign banks. The government-owned banks and national banks showed greater commitment to this issue than did the banks with foreign capital. This finding suggests that banks with foreign capital were not fully interested in sponsoring activities aimed at sustainable development.

This paper uses a sample of 2,186 credit default swap spreads quoted in the European market during the period 2002–2009 to empirically analyze which model – accounting- or market-based – better explains corporate credit risk. We find little difference in the explanatory power of these two approaches. Our results indicate that a comprehensive model that combines accounting- and market-based variables is the best option to explain the credit risk, suggesting that both types of data are complementary. We also demonstrate that the explanatory power of credit risk models is particularly strong during periods of high uncertainty, such as those experienced in the recent financial crisis. Finally, the comprehensive model continues to produce the best results if the credit rating is used as the proxy for credit risk; however, accounting variables currently appear to have a more important role than market variables in determining corporate credit ratings.

This study examines the contingent effect of climate vulnerability on the relationship between board characteristics and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance of global banks. We use a dataset of 438 banks across 54 countries (2010–2022) and fixed effects estimation, two‐stage least squares, and generalized method of moments to address potential endogeneity. Our findings show that the effectiveness of board governance mechanisms on ESG performance depends on the levels of climate vulnerability. Although most mechanisms perform well in low‐risk contexts, only CSR committees and gender diversity on the board improve ESG performance in stable and highly vulnerable environments. These results highlight the importance of integrating climate vulnerability into corporate governance frameworks, suggesting that a one‐size‐fits‐all approach to board composition is insufficient. This study underscores the need for adaptive governance strategies that align with regional climate risks and offers practical insights for regulators, investors, and executives to enhance ESG performance.

The objective of this article is to analyse how regional financial and economic differences influence the capital structure decisions of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Specifically, this paper considers the regional financial and economic differences in four ways: the development of the financial sector in the region, bank market concentration, the financial cost of obtaining funds, and regional economic development. For this purpose, we used unbalanced panel data from 26,504 SMEs across the 20 Italian regions and over the period from 2004 to 2010. This work is completed with an analysis of a no-crisis (2004–2007) and a crisis period (2008–2010). The results show that the regional differences in the degree of financial sector development, banking concentration, and local economic situations have a significant impact on the leverage level of SMEs, while the cost of obtaining funds is only relevant during a period of economic stability. These results suggest that insights can be derived from data disaggregation at the regional level inside the same country. These regional divergences in the capital structure of SMEs could influence regional economic resilience.