Bookkeeping practices and SME performance: The intervening role of owners' accounting skills.

Aside from statutory requirements, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) hardly take into consideration reliable accounting systems. Therefore, poor and ineffective bookkeeping has contributed to the collapse of some SMEs. This paper examines the intervening role of owners' accounting skills in the relationship between bookkeeping practices and the performance of SMEs in the Ho Municipal Assembly of Ghana using a sample of 296 SMEs. In a structural equation modelling (SEM) framework, the Smart Partial Least Squares (Smart-PLS) software is employed to analyse the relationships between owners' accounting skills, bookkeeping practices, and the performance of SMEs. We find that bookkeeping practices and owners' accounting skills have significant positive effects on the performance of SMEs. Most importantly, we show the existence of a significant indirect relationship between bookkeeping practices and SME performance such that owners' accounting skills positively intervenes the relationship between bookkeeping practices and SME performance. Thus, in the presence of higher owners' accounting skills, the relationship between bookkeeping and the performance of SMEs is strengthened further. In a typical emerging economy context, while appropriate regulatory bodies, such as the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI), in the Ghanaian context, and local revenue collection authorities could put forth measures like periodic compliance audits to ensure that registered SMEs are managed by skilled personnel, fostering them to meet basic requirements for keeping records and managing their accounts to improve their performance, it is worth acknowledging that the onus lies on SME managers to recognise the relevance of good recordkeeping and account management practices to ensure sustained business performance.

Correction: Information flow dynamics between geopolitical risk and major asset returns.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0284811.].

The cryptocurrency environmental attention and green bond connectedness.

We study the dynamic connectedness between green bonds and the cryptocurrency environmental attention index (ICEA), using the TVP-VAR methodology. The spillovers increase with the level of environmental attention, suggesting cross-market activism by green investors. Denmark, the Euro area, Hong Kong, Australia, and the US are the source of spillovers, while Japan, the UK, and Switzerland are major recipients. The return spillovers exceed volatility spillovers and rise in strength during COVID-19 and the geopolitics-induced military hostilities in Ukraine. Several imperative implications of the findings are notable for policymakers, market participants, and practitioners.

Information flow dynamics between geopolitical risk and major asset returns.

We quantify information flows between geopolitical risk (GPR) and global financial assets such as equity, bonds, and commodities, with a focus on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. We combine transfer entropy and the I-CEEMDAN framework to measure information flows at multi-term scales. Our empirical results indicate that (i) in the short term, crude oil and Russian equity show opposite responses to GPR; (ii) in the medium and long term, GPR information increases the risk in the financial market; and (iii) the efficiency of the financial asset markets can be confirmed on a long-term scale. These findings have important implications for market participants, such as investors, portfolio managers, and policymakers.

Asymmetric impacts of geopolitical risk on stock markets: A comparative analysis of the E7 and G7 equities during the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

In a nonparametric quantile-on-quantile regression model, we analyze the asymmetric financial impact of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict-induced geopolitical risk (GPR) on the top-seven emerging (E7) and developed (G7) stock markets. Our findings indicate that the impact of GPR on stock markets is not only market-specific but also asymmetric. Except for Russia and China, all E7 and G7 stocks respond positively to GPR in normal conditions. Among the E7 (G7) countries, stock markets from Brazil, China, Russia, and Turkey (France, Japan, and the US) are resilient to GPR in bearish stages. The portfolio and policy implications of our findings have been highlighted.

Information flow between global financial market stress and African equity markets: An EEMD-based transfer entropy analysis.

The flow of information between markets is important to guide investors and policymakers in the effective allocation of assets and proactive market regulation, respectively. This study examines the impact of information flow from global financial market stress on the African stock markets using the daily US financial stress index (USFSI) and other advanced economies' financial stress index (OAEFSI) to proxy the global financial stress index. To understand the information flow dynamics across various investment horizons, the ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD)-based transfer entropy is employed. Our findings reveal that African equity markets are highly risky for information flow from global financial market stress. However, we identify diversification prospects based on market conditions for Ghana and Egypt in the short term and Tanzania, Cote D'Ivoire, and Egypt in the medium term. Empirical results also show that the information flow from global financial stress to African stock markets depends on time scales, economic relations, and the state of global financial markets. The findings are important for investors, portfolio managers, practitioners, and policymakers.

Modelling the asymmetric effect of COVID-19 on REIT returns: A quantile-on-quantile regression analysis.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all sectors of the economy resulting in unprecedented challenges for market participants, policymakers, and practitioners. This study envisages this issue from the perspective of real estate investment trusts (REITs), which is a relatively less analysed segment. We examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on REIT returns for 12 top REIT regimes spread across America, Asia, and Europe under the bullish, bearish, and normal market conditions over the COVID-19 period (specifically from February 02, 2020, to January 24, 2022). We employ the quantile-on-quantile regression and causality-in-quantiles approach. We document a strong (weak) predictive power of COVID-19 cases on REIT returns within the lower (upper) conditioned quantiles. Our findings are of importance to market participants, practitioners, and regulators across REIT regimes.

Spillovers and contagion between BRIC and G7 markets: New evidence from time-frequency analysis.

We examine the time-frequency spillovers, contagion, and pairwise interrelations between the BRIC index and its constituents, and between BRIC and G7 economies. The extent of interdependencies between market blocs and their constituents needs to be ascertained in the time-frequency domain for efficient asset allocation and portfolio management. Accordingly, the Baruník and Krehlík spillover index is employed with daily data between 11th December 2015 and 28th May 2021. We find the overall and net spillovers between BRIC and G7 to be significant in the short-term, with France, Germany, and the UK transmitting the greatest shocks to BRIC markets. We find no significant evidence of any sporadic volatilities for the studied markets in the COVID-19 period across all frequencies. However, we reveal contagious spillovers between the BRIC and G7 economies across all time scales in 2017 and 2019, which respectively reflect the persistent effect of Brexit and the US-China trade tension. Our findings divulge that in the short-term (mid-to-long-term), France and the UK (Canada and the US), are the sources of contagion between the BRIC and G7 markets. From the net-pairwise spillovers, we report high connectedness between the BRIC index and its members. BRIC countries are found to be transmitters of net-pairwise spillovers to the G7 markets excluding Japan. We recommend portfolio diversification using BRIC and G7 stocks in the intermediate-to-long-term horizon, where spillovers are less concentrated. Additionally, since individual markets are impacted by their unique shocks, investors should pay close attention to these shocks when distributing assets. In the interim, policy-makers and governments across the globe should ensure effective liberalisation of their economies to encourage international trade flows to boost portfolio diversification.

Technology and instructor dimensions, e-learning satisfaction, and academic performance of distance students in Ghana.

E-learning is soon expected to be widely used as a teaching and learning method in the mainstream for educational institutions. Given the relative preparedness of advanced economies, the conclusions about their implementation level with e-learning are incomparable with emerging countries. Emerging economies must, therefore, be aware of the issues to consider when formulating successful adoption or implementation strategies. However, empirical studies that bring forth these relevant factors are out of context. In a single framework, we model the structural relationships between the drivers of e-learning satisfaction and the performance of distance learning students in a frontier economy, Ghana. With 388 validated responses gathered from an online survey across the country between 29 May 2021 and 25 June 2021, we employ the Smart-PLS estimator to process and analyse the data. We explicate that the substantial drivers of e-learning satisfaction and performance among distance learning students include technology anxiety, instructor factors, course quality, technology quality, and ease of use. Our findings divulge that perceived learner satisfaction mediates the relationships between the drivers of satisfaction and learning outcomes of distance learning students in Ghana such that technology anxiety and instructor factors would not essentially enhance learner performance in the absence of e-learning satisfaction. Consequently, system quality, reflected by the information system success model must be supplemented by satisfaction, drawn from the expectation-confirmation theory, to fully explain the impact of efficient e-learning systems on learning outcomes. Not only does ease of use create satisfaction, but it also boosts performance. We, therefore, recommend institutions to develop regular training for both facilitators and students and also adopt user-friendly online platforms to aid patronage by learners.

Dynamic connectedness and spillovers between Islamic and conventional stock markets: time- and frequency-domain approach in COVID-19 era.

This study investigates the dynamic connectedness and spillovers between Islamic and conventional stock markets to reveal the time- and frequency-domain dynamics of the two asset classes under various market conditions. Using the spillover index of Baruník and Krehlík (2018), supplemented by the time-varying parameter vector autoregressions (TVP-VAR) connectedness model, we employ daily stock market indices for Islamic and conventional (G7) markets from November 23, 2015, to September 8, 2021. The findings explicate that the volatility spillovers across and within Islamic and/or G7 markets are time-varying and frequency-dependent but during market turbulences, the conventional stocks are prone to more volatilities than the Islamic stocks. Our findings additionally divulge contagious spillovers among Islamic and conventional stocks during Brexit and the studied COVID-19 period. Relative to mid-and long-term spillovers, we underscore the supremacy of short-term spillovers between Islamic and G7 markets. In turbulent trading periods, investors should utilise knowledge about market patterns and volatility to hedge their positions against lower stock returns, when spillover is more intense. Regulators should pay close attention to spillovers since they undermine cross-market connections. Intriguing findings and their implications are further discussed.

COVID-19 and food prices in sub-Saharan Africa.

This study investigated the impact of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak on prices of maize, sorghum, imported rice and local rice in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). We estimated dynamic panel data models with controls for macroeconomic setting using general method of moments estimation. The study found that the COVID-19 outbreak led to increases in food prices of the sampled countries. Restrictions on movements or lockdowns in the wake of COVID-19 was associated with an increase in the price of maize only. We also found that exchange rate, inflation and crude oil prices exerted a detrimental effect on food prices. We recommend that governments of SSA countries invest in infrastructure that improves efficiencies in the food supply chain during pandemics. Providing adequate support to industries in the value chain will also improve food availability and food price stability post-COVID-19.