Ahmed Alrashed

This paper examines whether board gender diversity conditions the association between ESG performance and dividend policy in Australian-listed firms. We employ an unbalanced panel of 127 ASX-listed companies over 2013–2023, and firm fixed-effects models with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors. The findings reveal that ESG performance is positively associated with dividends per share (DPS). Moreover, female board representation has no direct association with DPS, although it is positively associated with ESG performance. Further analysis shows that the ESG–dividend association strengthens with female representation and is concentrated in boards that have reached a critical mass of women; the marginal effect of ESG on DPS is statistically indistinguishable from zero on boards with fewer than 30% women, but positive and significant once female representation reaches about 30%, where a one-standard-deviation higher ESG score is associated with A$ 0.13 higher DPS (28% of the sample mean). This critical-mass pattern is robust to year fixed effects, winsorisation, and additional governance controls, but it is weaker under firm-clustered standard errors and specific to dividends per share rather than the payout ratio or the dividend yield. Investors and boards should therefore evaluate ESG performance and board composition jointly when assessing dividend capacity.

This study examines how energy market uncertainty affects corporate financial stability and whether environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance mitigates this relationship. Using a panel of 168 non-financial Australian firms from 2011 to 2023, we employ a two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM) with extensive robustness checks. The results reveal three central findings. First, energy market uncertainty exerts a statistically significant and economically meaningful negative effect on corporate financial stability, indicating that heightened energy price volatility amplifies firms’ financial fragility. Second, ESG performance is positively associated with financial stability, suggesting that sustainability-oriented firms exhibit superior risk management and resilience. Third, ESG performance significantly attenuates the adverse impact of energy market uncertainty, providing strong evidence that ESG functions as an effective shock-absorbing mechanism. These findings are robust to alternative measures of financial stability and energy uncertainty, different lag structures, alternative estimation methods, and a wide range of subsample analyses. Further analyses show that the moderating role of ESG is not driven by a single pillar; rather, environmental, social, and governance dimensions jointly enhance firms’ capacity to withstand energy-related shocks. The buffering effect of ESG is stronger among high-ESG firms, in knowledge- and technology-intensive sectors, and during periods of heightened systemic stress such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, the study provides novel firm-level evidence that ESG performance enhances corporate resilience to energy market uncertainty. The findings have important implications for policymakers, investors, and corporate managers seeking to strengthen financial stability in an era of elevated energy volatility and accelerating sustainability transitions.

Reconciling economic growth with environmental sustainability and energy security is a defining challenge for resource-constrained emerging economies. This study examines whether Jordan follows the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) and the Energy Kuznets Curve (EnKC)—two hypotheses positing that as an economy grows, its environmental degradation and energy consumption follow an inverted U-shaped curve in relation to per capita GDP—as counterparts to the original Kuznets curve. While these relationships have been investigated in cross-country settings, little attention has been given to individual emerging economies such as Jordan, where energy and environmental issues are among the most pressing challenges of the new century. The existence of EKC and EnKC curves is tested using a “time-varying parametric (TVP) framework”—specifically, the unobserved components model (UCM), utilizing annual data from 1980 to 2024. Further tests are carried out to validate the nonlinearity hypothesis using the variable-addition test and non-nested model selection tests. Moreover, we augment the EKC and EnKC by incorporating trade openness and urbanization as control variables. For robustness, we support the UCM results with the Dynamic OLS (DOLS) long-run estimator. The results support the EnKC across the entire battery of tests, with a turning point of roughly USD 4000–4650 depending on specification. For the EKC, the OLS quadratic estimation does not exhibit a clear inverted-U; however, once a stochastic trend (UCM) or appropriate covariates (Trade, Urban) are introduced, the inverted-U re-emerges with a turning point near USD 4149–4874. This study contributes novel empirical evidence on the EKC and EnKC for Jordan using a TVP framework. Whereas prior studies have explored the EKC in Jordan, this study systematically validates both the energy and environmental variants of the Kuznets curve using robust econometric strategies. The results offer valuable policy insights for sustainable development in Jordan and other resource-constrained emerging economies facing analogous development–environment trade-offs within international climate transition frameworks.

Despite the rapid institutionalization of ESG reporting mandates worldwide, the empirical question of whether ESG disclosure constitutes a structural, long-run determinant of corporate financial performance—rather than a cyclical or spurious co-trending artifact—remains unresolved. The prior literature predominantly employs short-panel estimators that assume stationarity and conflate long-run equilibrium effects with transitory associations. This study addresses that gap by applying a five-step non-stationary panel econometric framework to a sample of 479 S&P 500 firms across eleven GICS sectors over 2010–2022 (5084 firm-year observations), a period chosen to capture the full institutionalization of Bloomberg ESG reporting standards and to encompass two major macroeconomic stress episodes (the 2015–2016 commodity downturn and the COVID-19 shock). Im–Pesaran–Shin panel unit root tests confirm that ESG disclosure scores and financial performance measures are both integrated of order one. Pedroni residual-based panel cointegration tests decisively reject the null of no long-run relationship (Z = −62.38 for the ROA equation), establishing a stable cointegrating equilibrium. Fully Modified OLS and Dynamic OLS group-mean estimators yield bias-corrected long-run coefficients, and a panel error correction model quantifies short-run adjustment dynamics. The key finding is that a ten-point improvement in ESG disclosure is associated with a permanent nine-to-ten percentage-point gain in return on equity (FMOLS β = +1.023, p < 0.01; DOLS β = +0.914, p < 0.01), while the effect on return on assets is positive but more modest and sensitive to estimator choice. Complementary fixed-effects regressions reveal an asymmetric moderating role of macroeconomic uncertainty: equity market volatility (VIX) amplifies the ESG performance premium, whereas acute credit market stress (TED spread) attenuates it. Board governance variables are statistically insignificant across all five specifications, indicating that H3 (board governance) is not supported; this outcome is attributed to limited within-firm governance variation in the large-cap S&P 500 universe rather than a genuine absence of governance effects. The results are robust to lagged ESG measurement, winsorization, and alternative interaction specifications. The findings provide strong econometric evidence for the structural, permanent nature of the ESG–financial performance link in large-cap U.S. equities, with direct implications for mandatory disclosure policy and ESG-integrated investment strategies.

This research aims to examine the drivers of earnings quality (EQ) in emerging stock markets. By testing the impact of firm attributes and ownership structures on the level of earnings quality. The research followed a mixed-method approach (qualitative and quantitative) and was conducted based on a sample of 75 listed firms in Egypt as an emerging market from 2015 to 2022. The results of the research found that each firm attribute has a mixed impact on earning quality, such as firm size (positive on persistence and no impact on consistency) and ROA (U-shape on persistence and consistency). In addition, ownership structures uniquely and dynamically impact earnings, following positive, U-shape, and N-shape. This research sheds light on the drivers of the earnings quality (firm attributes and ownership structures) in the Egyptian-listed firms and helps policymakers implement appropriate corporate governance mechanisms. Our findings in Egypt can motivate future research to further investigate the most relevant factors that explain variations in earning persistence and consistency as a dimension of financial reporting quality in other emerging markets.