This research contributes to the existing corporate governance (CG) and social and environmental accountability (SEA) literature by exploring the impact of CG mechanisms (board independence, board size, CEO duality, and board gender diversity) on Chinese firms’ environmental performance, sustainability performance, and environmental information disclosures (EID). Furthermore, the investigation consequently ascertains the amount to which the CG–SEA connection is influenced by CEO qualities. Using a dynamic model of a SysGMM regression model, we found that board size, independence, and gender diversity in board and CEO duality are all favorably connected to Chinese enterprises’ environmental performance over a window of 10 years (2010–2019). Additionally, our findings imply that the analyzed CEO characteristics positively moderate the relationship between CG and SEA. Our findings have significant consequences for all stakeholders, including environmentalists, corporate regulators, CEOs, policymakers, and regulators.

This study uncovers the relationship of company’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance and capital structure in Chinese corporate sector. Additionally, we investigated if audit quality intervenes this ESG—capital structure nexus. Using panel regressions with fixed effects, we chose Chinese A-Listed companies giving 6295 firm-year observations from 2010 to 2019. The results support the legitimacy theory, suggesting that a company's ESG disclosure and overall progress is a crucial factor in determining their financing decisions. The results suggest that firms with better ESG performance found to have less debt financing and easier access to equity capital from stock markets. However, the results did not show a significant impact of audit quality on this relationship. Sensitivity tests, such as alternate parameter estimation measures, techniques to address endogeneity issues (sysGMM), and lagged regressions, were conducted and did not change the key conclusions of the study.

The pre-eminence of Islamic finance from the perspective of economic growth has been a long-standing debate. In recent decades, there has been a paradigm shift from interest-based banking to Islamic financial system. This study intends to examine the dynamic interaction of Islamic financial depth (IFD), Islamic financial intermediation (IFI), and asset quality with economic growth in a dual banking system. The paper employs autoregressive distributive lag regression (ARDL), error correction model (ECM) and Granger causality to examine the long and short run linkage by using the quarterly data of Pakistan from 2005 to 2019. The authors run two models to analyze the relative importance of financial depths (Islamic and conventional), financial intermediation (Islamic and conventional), and asset quality of both financial systems. A long-run relationship flowing from finance to growth in both Islamic and conventional finance models has been observed in our study. Furthermore, the findings recommend that strong financial intermediation plays an imperative role in driving economic growth by both financial sectors. The presence of a higher degree of Islamic financial assets in the economy contributes towards economic growth in the short-run. The results show that asset quality possibly plays an important intervening role in the overall finance-growth nexus.

The world experienced significant changes in its social and economic lives in 2020–21. Major stock markets experienced an immediate decline. This paper attempts to examine the impact of COVID-19 on stock market performance as well as to identify the differences between the responses of ESG stocks and normal stocks to pandemic conditions in the Arab region. Daily time series for three years between March 2019 and March 2021 were collected for the S&P Pan Arab Composite index and S&P/Hawkamah ESG Pan Arab Index. We used a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model to measure market shocks and a non-linear autoregressive distributed lagged (NARDL) regression model to display the relationship between COVID-19 measurements and the performance of stock indexes. The findings suggest that the volatilities of ESG portfolios and conventional ones were equally affected in the pre-COVID period. However, in the post-COVID period, the magnitude of volatility in the ESG stock index was significantly less compared to that of the conventional stock index. The results also revealed that in the ESG market, shock tended to remain for a shorter period. Furthermore, the ESG index was not affected by the number of confirmed cases and deaths. However, evidence of asymmetric long-run cointegration existed between the S&P index and number of cases and deaths. Increases in the numbers of cases and deaths caused a decline in market index, whereas the reverse trends were observed in the retreat of the pandemic.

The asset side of Islamic banks has two different portfolios running side by side, namely risk-sharing (PLS) and non-risk sharing (non-PLS) financing. The segregation of PLS and non-PLS financing has gathered some attention recently owning to its relative importance for sustainable economic output. This study attempts to analyze the impact of decomposed Islamic financing modes (PLS and non-PLS) with a particular focus on their impact on real economic activity. In addition, we moderated the relationship with asset quality of aggregate Islamic banking sector. Quarterly data from 2014 to 2021 have been sourced from datasets of the Islamic financial service board (IFSB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and Central banks’ data streams. Eleven countries have been selected based on the highest local and global share in global Islamic financial assets. Panel data regression model has been used in this study. The findings indicate that PLS financing is a weaker driver to channelize funds. However, industrial production output is significantly affected by non-PLS financing. Further the results suggest, Islamic finance–output nexus found to have a stronger relationship in the presence of higher asset quality of Islamic banks. The results show that firms mostly rely on non-PLS financing, due to reduced asymmetry and higher transparency in non-PLS contracts compared to PLS modes. The results have implications for governing bodies of Islamic financial system in boosting risk-sharing contracts and firms to limit agency conflicts arising from fluctuating cost of financing.