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This study aims to measure impact of several firm-specific factors on alternative measures of leverage. The authors also aim to study impact of the subprime crisis on such associations.

The authors utilized an unbalanced panel data of 973 firm-year observations on 47 UK listed non-financial firms for the years 1990–2019. Book-based and market-based long-term and total leverage measures have been used as explained variables. The explanatory variables are profitability, size, two measures of growth, asset tangibility, non-debt tax shields, firm age and product uniqueness. Fixed effect and random effect models with clustered robust standard errors have been utilized for data analysis. To find the effect of subprime crisis, original dataset was split to create pre-crisis and post-crisis datasets.

The authors find that profitability significantly reduces leverage while firms having more tangible assets use significantly more debt in capital structure. Firm size and non-debt tax shield have statistically insignificant positive impact on leverage. Having more unique products reduces use of external debt, albeit insignificantly. Growth, when measured as market-to-book ratio, has inconsistent impact, whereas capital expenditure insignificantly reduces leverage. Age is found to be an insignificant predictor of leverage. After the subprime crisis, firms started relying more on internal fund instead of external debt, more particularly short-term debt. Having more collateral is gradually becoming more important for availing external debt.

Data limitations restrict generalization of the findings.

This is one of the pioneering attempts to show how subprime crisis altered the theoretical domain of capital structure research in the UK.

Over the last ten years (2010–2019), the amount of nonperforming loans (NPLs) has been more than tripled in the banking industry of Bangladesh. Thus, this paper explores the behavioral dimensions, which contribute to the NPLs.

By analyzing social, cultural, psychological, political, economic, internal control mechanism and law enforcement contexts of Bangladesh, this study identifies nepotism (NE), moral hazard (MH ), inadequate collateral (IC), poor credit assessment (CA), lack of proper monitoring (LPM), repayment flexibility (RF), business risk (BR) and lending interest rate (LIR) as the catalysts of raising NPLs. Next, a structured questionnaire survey has been performed in Bangladesh among bank officials who closely work in credit risk management, credit supervision, corporate finance and loan recovery department. Finally, partial least squares (PLS) path modeling, a variance-based technique of structural equation modeling, is used in this study as a statistical tool to analyze the data.

This study finds that moral hazard problem, lack of proper monitoring, inadequate collateral and nepotism have significant positive impact on the raising of NPLs. Unfortunately, this study does not find any statistical significance of poor credit assessment, business risk and repayment flexibility on the NPLs in Bangladesh. Finally, this study reveals that lending interest rate has significant positive impact on the NPLs. Hence, this study concludes that domestic lending interest rate is not lower enough, and so this double-digit interest rate affects negatively to loan repayment.

This study concludes that moral hazard problem of borrower, lack of board independence, lack of proper monitoring, form and extent of collateral, management lobbying, indecorous personal guarantee by management, dependent-independent directors and nepotism are extensively contributing for occurring NPLs in Bangladesh. These noninstitutionalized stimulators should adequately be scrutinized by regulatory bodies, policy makers and banks. Besides, LIR needs to be decreased in a convenient level for mitigating NPLs.

This study is the empirical evidence of behavioral dimensions related with the growth of NPLs in Bangladesh by taking direct response from knowledgeable bankers.

To investigate the consequence of COVID-19 pandemic on the financial reporting and disclosure (FRD) practices, the study has been conducted. Moreover, this paper highlights the significance of FRD practices in any emergency period and its relevance with legitimacy theory in Bangladesh Perspective.

The COVID-19 pandemic has adverse impact on business. Hence, all the business activities have been categorized into five major aspects which are financial factors, business operations, business contracts, business value and stakeholders. These five major activities have been considered as independent variable. By analyzing various policy recommendations and guidelines of global and local accounting bodies, a structured questionnaire was developed in association with related IAS and IFRSs. Then, it was distributed among the accounting professionals of Bangladesh who are currently engaged in financial statement preparation and auditing services. Finally, data was analyzed through structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the hypothetical relationship between dependent variable and independent variable.

This study finds that financial factors, business contracts and stakeholders have significant relationship with the financial reporting and disclosure practices during the COVID-19 pandemic period. However, business operation and business value have no significant relationship with financial reporting and disclosure practices.

This study tries to analyze why and how firms should disclose essential information (both financial and non-financial) to the financial statement users during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study can be used as benchmark to issue a separate policy or standard for reporting any kind of adverse event in the financial reporting and disclosure practices.

To our best knowledge, we believe that this is first kind of study undertaken to investigate the consequence of COVID-19 pandemic on the FRD practices in the context of Bangladesh. This study is kind of exploratory in nature. Hence, future studies can explore industry-based financial reporting and disclosure practice in any pandemic period.

Due to large amounts of coal burning, huge carbon dioxide emission and poor environmental quality, it is important to identify whether environmental Kuznets curve exists in China and India since in downward period of environmental Kuznets curve, economic growth in these countries will largely contribute to world environmental quality. Further, it helps to make a comparative analysis between China and India on how economic growth will contribute to the environmental quality in both upward and downward period of environmental Kuznets curve due to energy consumption.

This study uses the data of carbon dioxide emission, per capita GDP and energy consumption from 1972 to 2017 to identify individual and panel-level environmental Kuznets curve of China and India. Before going to regression and causality analysis, unit root and cointegration tests are performed.

This study finds the existence of environmental Kuznets curve in China and India at both individual and panel level. Further, due to high energy consumption, environmental quality in China will deteriorate at a lower rate in the long run than that of India. Next, the increase in economic growth or per capita GDP in the long run will deteriorate environmental quality at a lower rate in China than that of India. Besides, with the zero level of energy consumption and per capita GDP, the environmental quality of China will be worse than that of India. However, increase in per capita GDP after threshold level will improve environmental quality in India at a higher rate than that of China.

It helps to formalize the comparative relationship between the two large Asian economies by knowing the influence of economic growth on environmental degradation due to energy consumption. However, this study cannot conclude exactly when China and India can avail the downturn in environmental Kuznets curve.

It firstly establishes a link among energy consumption, economic growth and environmental quality between China and India including comparative pace in both upward and downward period of environmental Kuznets curve.