Karamat Khan

This study examines the impact of alcohol culture on corporate innovation in China. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms, the analysis reveals that stronger alcohol culture significantly inhibits firm innovation, as measured by both patent quantity and quality. The results remain robust when innovation efficiency measures are applied. A battery of robustness checks including alternative variable definitions, model specifications and estimation methods such as the difference‐in‐difference (DID) and instrumental variable (IV) approaches further reinforce the baseline results. Additionally, heterogeneity tests show that the negative impact of alcohol culture is more amplified in regions with weaker legal environments, poorer corporate governance and firms led by less educated executives. Mechanism analysis indicates that alcohol culture suppresses innovation primarily by increasing earnings management and excessive entertainment expenditures which distort resource allocation and reduce transparency. Overall, the results highlight that although alcohol‐based social interactions may foster social connections and facilitate networking, they can also impose hidden institutional and behavioral costs that can hinder firms' innovation and undermine their long‐term competitiveness.

Amid a global shift towards eco-friendly practices, this study investigates the impact of green human resource management (GHRM) practices on green innovative work behavior (GIWB) in the hospitality sector, focusing on emerging and developing countries, specifically China and Pakistan. The research also explores the mediating roles of green perceived organizational support (GPOS) and organizational citizenship behavior towards the environment (OCBE), as well as the moderating role of green transformational leadership (GTL). This study is grounded in the AMO (ability, motivation, and opportunity) theory and organizational support theory. Data were collected through a questionnaire, yielding 503 valid responses from hotel employees in Beijing, China, and 498 valid responses from Islamabad, Pakistan. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was employed to examine and compare the results across both samples. The findings reveal positive and significant relationships between GHRM and GIWB, as well as notable mediation and moderation effects among the specified variables. Interestingly, GTL did not significantly moderate the relationship between GHRM and GIWB in Pakistan’s sample, highlighting a regional contrast. This study contributes to advancing the implementation of GHRM practices to enhance GIWB in the hospitality sector, with insights into the role of GTL across different cultural contexts.

Introduction: The relationship between fossil fuel energy resources and environmental degradation has been quantified from theoretical and empirical perspectives. However, none of these studies has considered the conditioning role played by institutions in the nexus, especially for BRICS countries. Therefore, the current study examines the moderating role of institutional quality using annual data from 1996–2018 for BRICS countries.Method: The study employs the novel cross-sectional augmented autoregressive distributed lags (CS-ARDL) estimator, robust to cross-sectional dependency and heterogeneity, for short-run and long-run estimation. Moreover, augmented mean group (AMG) and common correlated effects mean group (CCEMG) estimators are used for robustness analysis.Results: The finding reveals that fossil fuel energy resources, globalization, and growth significantly positively affect the ecological footprint, whereas the institutional quality significantly negatively effects the ecological footprint in BRICS countries. Furthermore, the interaction term of institutional quality with fossil fuel energy resources significantly negatively moderates the fossil fuel energy-EFP nexus. Finally, we performed the Dumitrescu and Hurlin (DH) panel causality analysis to determine the causality direction between the variables. Except for intuitions quality and growth, we found a unidirectional causality for explanatory variables and EFP.Discussion: The study provides novel empirical evidence and recommends the importance of institutional quality for environmental sustainability.

Since the end of 2019, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has engendered widespread fear and anxiety across China. Nearly half a million international students pursuing their studies in Chinese universities have also been exposed to the psychological distress triggered by the unfolding crisis. In addition to government and medical institutions' efforts, universities have also endeavored to mitigate concerns among these students under quarantine on campus by providing reliable information as well as medical, monetary, and emotional support. In this study, international students' trust in university management teams and its role in remediating their anxieties were evaluated using an online survey conducted after 10 days of the lockdown of Wuhan, China. The empirical analysis incorporates quantitative data from 180 international students. Ordinary least squares regression and probit regression were used in the analysis with the non-robust and robust models. The study found students' perception of trust in university management to be negatively associated with their anxiety levels. Additionally, having trust in university management was found to positively influence students' commitment to the self-quarantine guidelines. These results reinforce the important role of universities and their relationship with international students during public health emergencies.

In trying to explain the relationship between exchange rate and demand for money researchers have applied different models. In this paper, we applied both the linear and nonlinear ARDL to check the effects of exchange rate changes on the demand for money (M1 and M2) in The Gambia. The result revealed that the demand for money is cointegrated with its determinants and have a stable short-run relationship. It also revealed that exchange rate changes have only short-run asymmetric effects on demand for money (M1 or M2) but don’t have long-run effects.