There is a need for manufacturing companies to monitor their working capital for the purpose of ensuring continuity. This study examined the effect of working capital management on the profitability of listed manufacturing companies in selected African countries from 2014 to 2019. The selected countries are Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia. The criteria for selecting these countries were that they must have a functional stock exchange and be a member of the Commonwealth of nations for the sample period. The data were extracted from the respective countries’ stock exchanges from 2014 to 2019 and were analyzed using descriptive statistics (to compare performance across countries), a panel unit test, and the panel fully modified least squares method. The findings show that net profit ratio (NPR) varies across the countries based on different practices. The study also discovered that the account receivables period and cash conversion cycle have a positive and significant relationship with financial profitability. Account payment period and inventory management have a positive and insignificant relationship with profitability. The study recommends that emphasis should be placed on the components of working capital policy to ensure survival of the company because of its impact on profitability.

This research examines the impact of market risk premium, size, book-to-market equity, profitability, and investment as risk factors on stock return. Portfolios are formed to develop the left-hand side and right-hand side portfolios. The objective of this paper is to assess the performance of the equity market and to enhance the generalizability of the five-factor model. A statistical analysis is applied to estimate the asset pricing model to assess their performance in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) equity market. The researchers found that there were value premiums in the average stock returns in all the countries except Malaysia. Traces of profitability premium can be observed in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. However, there was no evidence of investment premiums in any of the countries. The study examines whether the asset pricing models capture the value, profitability and investment patterns in the capital market. The five-factor model performs better than the three-factor model in explaining the average excess returns of the size–BM (book-to-market) and size–profitability portfolios. However, the five-factor model fares poorly in explaining the average excess returns of the size–investment portfolios.

Financial inclusion has been recognized as a development policy priority and a key to economic growth in developing economies. Essentially, most Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries have witnessed unstable economic growth over the last three decades. Financial inclusiveness is fundamental to sustainable growth for any economy. This study investigates the effects of financial inclusion on 41 Sub-Saharan African countries from 2004–2019, employing the generalized method of moments (GMM) method and a Granger causality analysis. The results show a positive relationship between financial inclusion and economic growth. The non-causality tests revealed bi-directional causality between the variables for the whole region and low-income and lower-middle-income countries. Furthermore, a unidirectional causality runs from financial inclusion to economic growth in upper-middle-income countries. The study concluded that financial inclusion positively affects the economic growth of SSA and recommends that policies and interventions be redefined in the financial system to achieve steady economic growth and sustainability.

This research investigates the possibilities of diversifying Islamic and conventional stock indices in the German stock market with other commodities, such as crude oil, Bitcoin, and gold. The EUR/USD exchange rate was selected as the robustness test. Our assessment, which was established based on the vector error correction model, reveals that crude oil and German conventional stock index returns have a greater impact on the other variables under consideration. Based on the MGARCH-DCC method, our results indicate that Bitcoin has the least correlation with most variables under consideration, which benefits portfolio diversification. Bitcoin has been exceptionally volatile over the last eight years; therefore, investors would benefit more from including EUR/USD or gold in their portfolio than Bitcoin. According to continuous wavelet transforms (CWT) analysis, the holding period between German stock indices and gold should not be shorter than 128 days because the correlation is exceptionally high within that period.

The article proposes a method to broach the complication and mixture of the triangular causal nexus among gross domestic product (GDP), foreign direct investment (FDI), and foreign tourist arrivals (FTA) in Thua Thien Hue (TTH) province that has not yet been studied. FDI into TTH province fluctuates unpredictably, so the study investigates the causal relationship between the triangular variables over the whole period (1995–2019) and the shortened period (2003–2019). The ARDL model is the most optimal choice due to the heterogeneity of stationary characteristics and short time series data. The shortened period has established more statistically significant short- and long-term Granger causal relationships, excluding the economic crisis effect. The Granger causality test only underlined a unidirectional short-term relationship running from FTA to FDI in the shortened period. Policies for economic development in TTH province need to strengthen the coordination between foreign investment and tourism so that all economic sectors can jointly create spillover effects on economic growth.

This study explores the determinants of the profitability of banks listed on the Kuwaiti stock exchange, Boursa Kuwait. This study also investigates the financial performance of the listed Kuwaiti banks during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this study is to examine the correlation between profitability and the factors that determine profitability for 11 listed Kuwaiti banks from 2013 to 2020. Relevant data was statistically analyzed using the generalized method of moments (GMM) model. The empirical findings of this research indicate that deposit volume and oil prices positively impact the profitability of the Kuwaiti banking sector. Conversely, bank size, leverage, and capitalization had a significant negative impact on the earnings of the listed Kuwaiti banks. Based on the findings of this study, several policy recommendations are made that would grow the profits of the Kuwaiti banking sector and mitigate the effects of negative factors.

This research aims to study the guidelines for managing the labor relations system to reduce conflicts. The study was conducted using descriptive statistics, reference statistics and multivariate statistics. It was found that guidelines for managing the labor relations system to reduce conflicts in the industrial business sector comprised five aspects arranged in order of importance as follows: collaboration, working environment, organizational support, job characteristics and benefits. The hypothesis testing showed that workers paid more attention to guidelines for managing the labor relations system to reduce conflicts in the industrial business sector than executives and government officials did, with a statistical significance level of 0.05. The analysis of the structural equation model revealed that it passed the assessment criteria.

The aim of this study is to determine the main player behind the existence of the day-of-the-week effect on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) by analyzing the trading patterns for investors using the EGARCH model. The sample comprised all companies trading in the financial sector during the period from January 2, 2008, to December 31, 2019. The results show that Jordanian investors are the main players behind the existence of this phenomenon. In contrast, foreign investors do not enhance the existence of this phenomenon. What is striking in the results is that Jordanian institutional investors are the main source of instability in the ASE. Instability in the market has prompted individual investors to imitate institutional investors. This means that traders make the most of their investment decisions based on imitating others, not on weighing the risks and returns, and this reflects a high risk in dealing with the ASE in particular.

In 2020, the cotton output of region X accounted for 87% of the country’s total cotton output with its high degree, large-scale production. We analyzed region X's willingness to transfer land out and the main influencing factors. The results show that farmers have sufficient confidence in agricultural production and a strong willingness to expand the production scale. The higher the degree of education and policy mastery, the more willing they are to transfer out land management rights. The higher the number of labor force, the larger the area of cultivated land. When the type of crop planted is cotton, the higher the proportion of agricultural income is. The farmers who think that transferring land out is risky behavior are less willing to transfer out the land. Analyzing the problems of large-scale farming in region X can provide a helpful reference for the development of China’s modern agriculture.

The current paper aims to investigate the stability of money demand in the case of Korea. Since the economic reforms in Korea faced considerable structural changes, it was difficult to formulate a stable money demand function. The use of unit root and cointegration tests with structural breaks suggest that economic and financial deregulations have influenced the stability of money demand. The cointegration results suggest a cointegration vector in all models, implying a long-run relationship. Furthermore, the estimated long-run equations show that the elasticity of long-run industrial production to real money is positive and very close to one. Finally, the exogeneity test shows a long-run, one-way, causal relationship from industrial production to M1 and a bi-directional causality between M1 and interest rate in both models. In the case of M3, there are long-run, one-way, causal relationships from industrial production and interest rate to M3 in both models.