Abdulltif Abdulrhman Almulhem

Background Cybersecurity has become a strategic governance issue that affects firms’ financial performance and long-term resilience. While cybersecurity disclosure may enhance stakeholder confidence by improving transparency, limited evidence exists on whether board characteristics influence the relationship between cybersecurity disclosure and financial performance. This study examines the impact of cybersecurity disclosure on firm financial performance and investigates the moderating roles of board gender diversity and technological expertise in the Saudi Arabian context. Methods The study uses a balanced panel of 155 non-financial firms listed on the Saudi Exchange (Tadawul) over the period 2020–2024. Pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is employed as the baseline estimation method, while System Generalized Method of Moments (System GMM) is used to address potential endogeneity concerns. Additional robustness analyses are conducted using alternative measures of cybersecurity disclosure and financial performance. Results The findings indicate that cybersecurity disclosure is positively associated with firm financial performance, suggesting that greater transparency regarding cybersecurity practices contributes to improved organizational outcomes. In contrast, cybersecurity incident disclosure is negatively associated with financial performance, reflecting the adverse consequences of reported cyber incidents. Furthermore, board gender diversity and board technological expertise significantly strengthen the positive relationship between cybersecurity disclosure and financial performance. The results remain robust across alternative model specifications, disclosure measures, and dynamic estimation techniques. Conclusions The findings demonstrate that the financial benefits of cybersecurity disclosure depend not only on the extent of disclosure but also on the quality of corporate governance. Boards with greater gender diversity and technological expertise enhance firms’ ability to translate cybersecurity transparency into superior financial performance. These findings provide practical implications for regulators, corporate boards, and policymakers seeking to strengthen cybersecurity governance, improve disclosure practices, and enhance organizational resilience in support of Saudi Vision 2030.

The aim of this investigation is to expand the understanding of the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) horizon on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices using an unbalanced panel data set of Saudi‐listed companies from 2016 to 2024. This study provides new evidence that CEOs' approach to retirement has a positive and significant impact on environmental, social, and governance practices. Two justifications support these findings: first, CEOs may seek to protect their legacy and reputation before leaving their position; second, the Saudi Capital Market Authority encourages listed companies to produce annual ESG reports by providing public guidelines for ESG. Additionally, our study finds that firm size and firm age are positively and significantly associated with environmental, governance, and social disclosures. It also reveals a significant positive relationship between firm growth and environmental and governance disclosures, while no significant association is found between firm growth and social disclosures. The results are robust to various tests and alternative explanations.

Background Sub-Saharan Africa faces a persistent external-finance constraint that limits investment, employment, technology transfer and progress toward sustainable development. Rather than treating the regressors as separate determinant questions, this study investigates a broader empirical phenomenon: whether foreign capital systematically responds to domestic financial architecture, institutional credibility and environmental conditions in heterogeneous Sub-Saharan African economies. Methods Annual data for 44 Sub-Saharan African economies from 2004 to 2022 were analysed using a sequential panel design. Cross-sectional-dependence and slope-heterogeneity diagnostics motivate second-generation CIPS unit-root testing, Westerlund cointegration and heterogeneous estimation. CS-ARDL serves as the baseline estimator; CCEMG and AMG assess estimator robustness, System GMM addresses dynamic endogeneity concerns, panel quantile regression examines distributional heterogeneity and Dumitrescu-Hurlin tests assess Granger-predictive direction. Results Financial inclusion, the domestic-credit proxy interpreted conservatively as financial intermediation capacity, and government effectiveness are positively associated with both FDI and remittance inflows in the long run. In the FDI equation, the positive CO2 term and negative squared term indicate concavity. The implied turning point is approximately 28.0 metric tons of CO2 per capita, above the sample maximum of 9.814; therefore, the estimates do not establish a within-sample inverted-U reversal. Carbon emissions are negatively associated with remittances. Conclusions The results support a common pattern of foreign-capital responsiveness to domestic conditions, while the significant slope heterogeneity implies that reported coefficients are average heterogeneous effects rather than identical relationships for all SSA economies. Policy implications are therefore framed as evidence-consistent priorities rather than causal prescriptions.

Background Education, foreign direct investment (FDI), and trade openness influence environmental sustainability through competing human capital, technology transfer, scale, composition, and pollution-haven channels. Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa remains fragmented and often overlooks cross-sectional dependence and asymmetric responses. Methods This study examines a panel of Sub-Saharan African economies from 1990 to 2019, using production-based and consumption-based carbon dioxide emissions as environmental outcomes. The empirical strategy applies cross-sectional dependence and slope-heterogeneity diagnostics, second-generation unit root and cointegration tests, dynamic seemingly unrelated regression, continuously updated fully modified and bias-corrected estimators, asymmetric decompositions, and panel causality tests. Results Education is consistently associated with lower emissions across the principal long-run specifications. FDI is associated with lower production-based emissions but higher consumption-based emissions in the principal symmetric estimates, while the asymmetric findings show that the response differs between positive and negative FDI shocks and across time periods. Trade openness is predominantly emission-increasing, and urbanisation is associated with higher emission levels. Robustness analyses support the stability of core associations. Conclusions Sustainability policies in Sub-Saharan Africa should combine environmental education with screening and performance standards for FDI and trade-related production. Policies should consider asymmetric adjustments and economy-specific conditions when pursuing low-carbon development.

This study examines the effects of FinTech innovation and good governance on financial sustainability in 25 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period 2004–2022, with explicit attention to the asymmetric role of exchange rate volatility. Despite substantial growth in digital finance and governance reform efforts across SSA, macro-panel evidence examining the simultaneous and nonlinear effects of FinTech, governance quality, and exchange rate dynamics on systemic financial sustainability remains absent from the literature. This study directly addresses this gap. Using a balanced panel dataset and a comprehensive econometric framework, this study employs Cross-Sectional Autoregressive Distributed Lag (CS-ARDL) and Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) models to capture both long-run and short-run dynamics as well as asymmetric effects. The empirical strategy is supported by a sequence of diagnostic and pre-estimation tests, including slope heterogeneity, cross-sectional dependence, second-generation panel unit root tests, panel cointegration, and Dumitrescu–Hurlin panel causality analysis. The findings indicate that FinTech innovation and good governance contribute positively to financial sustainability operationalised using the country-level Bank Z-score in both the short and long run. Furthermore, exchange rate volatility exhibits asymmetric effects, with currency depreciation generating negative short-run effects on financial sustainability, while long-run structural adaptation partially moderates these adverse impacts. The study concludes that strengthening digital financial innovation, improving governance quality, and implementing effective exchange rate risk management policies are essential for enhancing the resilience and sustainability of financial systems in SSA.

This study examines the socioeconomic, institutional, technological, and behavioral determinants of carbon dioxide (CO ₂ ) emissions across the G7 countries over the period 2011–2024. Specifically, it investigates how self‐reported life satisfaction (SRLS), human development (HDI), total factor productivity (TFP), environmental policy stringency (EPS), government effectiveness (GE), and real expenditure per capita (REPC) are associated with CO ₂ emissions while accounting for the nonlinear effect of HDI and the moderating role of household expenditure. Following diagnostic tests for slope heterogeneity, cross‐sectional dependence, stationarity, cointegration, multicollinearity, and model specification, the study employs the FE‐DKSE as the primary estimation technique, with PCSE and FGLS estimations used to assess robustness. The findings reveal that HDI is consistently associated with lower CO ₂ emissions, while its significant quadratic term indicates a nonlinear relationship that does not support the conventional EKC hypothesis. EKC exhibits a positive association with CO ₂ emissions, whereas environmental policy stringency contributes to emission reductions. Moreover, the SRLS × REPC interaction is positive and significant, suggesting that the association between life satisfaction and CO ₂ becomes stronger as household expenditure increases. The robustness analyses confirm the stability of these relationships across alternative estimators. By integrating nonlinear human development effects and the behavioral interaction between subjective well‐being and household expenditure within a unified empirical framework, this study delivers updated and robust indications on the complex drivers of carbon emissions in advanced economies and contributes to a more inclusive understanding of the development–environment nexus in the G7 countries.

Carbon-based indicators do not show whether ecosystems can generate sufficient biocapacity to fulfil human needs, and the G20 economies account for a large portion of the global ecological burden. This study analyses the load capacity factor (LCF) of 19 G20 economies between 2000 and 2022, measured as biocapacity divided by the ecological footprint. It examines the long-run association between green bond issuance and ecological carrying capacity, as well as the moderating role of climate policy uncertainty (CPU) in this association. The analysis includes Pesaran cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity tests, Cross-sectionally Augmented Im, Pesaran, and Shin (CIPS) and Cross-sectionally Augmented Dickey-Fuller (CADF) unit-root tests, Fourier-Shin cointegration, Cross-Sectionally Augmented Autoregressive Distributed Lag (CS-ARDL) estimation, Augmented Mean Group (AMG), Common Correlated Effects Mean Group (CCEMG) robustness checks, and Konya bootstrap Granger-causality tests, and conditional marginal-effect analysis for the GB_GDP × CPU interaction. The main CS-ARDL results show a positive long-run association for green bond issuance (β = 0.182, p < 0.01) and a negative association for the CPU (β = −0.011, p < 0.01). The interaction term is negative (β = −0.004, p < 0.05), indicating that the green bond-LCF association weakens as policy uncertainty increases. The conditional marginal effects become statistically indistinguishable from zero near the upper tail of the CPU distribution. The Konya results indicate heterogeneous country-level temporal patterns rather than uniform structural causality. Overall, green finance is associated with a stronger ecological carrying capacity when climate policy settings are stable and institutional conditions support long-term ecological investment.