Do oil, gold and metallic price volatilities prove gold as a safe haven during COVID-19 pandemic? Novel evidence from COVID-19 data.

The spreading COVID-19 outbreak has wreaked havoc on the world's financial system that raises an urgent need for the re-evaluation of the gold as safe haven for their money because of the unprecedented challenges faced by markets during this period. Therefore, the current study investigates whether different asset class volatility indices affect desirability of gold as a safe-haven commodity during COVID-19 pandemic. Long run and the short run relationship of gold prices with gold price volatility, oil price volatility, silver price volatility and COVID-19 (measured by the number of deaths due to COVID) has been analyzed in the current study by applying ARDL Bound testing cointegration and non linear ARDL approach on daily time series data ranging from January 2020 to Dec 2021. Findings of the study suggest that in the long run, oil price volatility and gold price volatility positively affect the gold prices, whereas the effect of silver price volatility on gold prices is negative in the long run. However in the short run, all the three indices negatively impact the gold prices. In contrast, the impact of COVID-19 is positive both in the short run and in the long run that proves the validity of gold as safe haven asset in the time of the deadly pandemic. The findings of this study have significant implications and offer investors with some indications to hedge their investments by considering the gold's ability of safe haven during this era of pandemic.

Entrepreneurship, Corporate Social Responsibilities, and Innovation Impact on Banks' Financial Performance.

The basic aim of this research was to check the impact of innovation, corporate social responsibilities (CSR), and entrepreneurship on the monetary performance of banks in five different countries: Qatar, Pakistan, China, the United States (US), and France. This research was conducted to measure the relationship of these factors and innovative workforce activities. The secondary data were collected from websites of twenty five banks in different countries, including Islamic and conventional banks. Different econometric analyses, such as descriptive statistical analysis, correlation coefficient test for measuring the interaction, and ordinary least square regression analysis for determining the impact of dependent and independent variables, were carried out. In the present study, entrepreneurship, CSR, and innovation were taken as independent variables. Board size, frequency of assemblies, and self-employed with large shareholders were included as sub-parts of entrepreneurship. On the other hand, the financial performance of banks was taken as the dependent variable. Return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) were considered parts of economic performance. The overall conclusions drawn in this study showed that there was a significant relationship between all the studied variables. The research provided useful insights into the long-debated question regarding the relevance of entrepreneurship and CSR.