This book is a collection of high-impact papers accepted and presented at the 2019 Vietnam’s Business and Economics Research Conference (VBER2019) organised by Ho Chi Minh City Open University held on 18th–20th July 2019. The Special Issue is associated with a broad coverage of the contemporary issues in Business and Economics in Vietnam and other emerging markets reflecting a key theme of VBER2019: Vietnam’s Place in the Asia Pacific Region. A total of 14 papers were published from more than the 120 submissions to the VBER2019 Conference. Published papers had been undergone a rigorous reviewing process conducted by the Journal of Risk and Financial Management. The papers incorporated in this book address contemporary issues in business and economics from Vietnam and other emerging markets in the Asian region from various angles such as economics, finance, and statistics to management science. At the time of writing this note, some of the papers have attracted more than 1000 downloads in 3 months. In particular, a paper on “Foreign Direct Investment and Economic Growth from Developing Countries in the Short Run and Long Run” by Trang Thi-Huyen Dinh and her team has attracted almost 6000 downloads in 3 months. These statistics indicate that the papers published in this Special Issue have attracted the wide interest of readers. Among these 14 published papers, three main areas of important contemporary issues in Business and Economics in the Asian region can be identified. First, a block of papers deals with various important and fundamental issues in the emerging markets the Asian region, from exchange rate regime, financial inclusion, and financial development to energy consumption and environmental degradation. On the issue of CO2 emissions, energy consumption and economic growth in the ASEAN, Vo, Vo, and Le utilized various time series econometrics approaches. Key findings from this paper indicate that there are no long-run relationships among carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, energy consumption, renewable energy, population growth, and economic growth in the Philippines and Thailand, but a relationship does exist in Indonesia, Myanmar, and Malaysia. Loo, in his paper on financial inclusion for the ASEAN, concluded that advancing internet capability and availability present investors an opportunity to offer financial technology or Fintech to meet the need for financial services in this digital era. Second, a challenge in quantitative studies for a single country, such as Vietnam, with limited data is generally noted. However, various empirical studies on Vietnam’s business and economics issues have been conducted. Nguyen, Quan, and Pham examined the cultural distance and entry mode of foreign direct investment in Vietnam. A key finding from their paper is that when there is a great cultural difference between Vietnam and their home country, foreign-invested firms prefer wholly owned subsidiaries over equity joint ventures. Within the Vietnamese market, Pham, Vo, Ho, and McAleer conducted a study on the issue of corporate financial distress. The authors conclude that the corporate financial distress prediction model, which includes accounting factors with macroeconomic indicators, performs much better than alternative models. In addition, the evidence confirms that the global financial crisis (GFC) had a damaging impact on each sector, with the Health & Education sector demonstrating the most impressive recovery post-GFC, and the utilities sector recording a dramatic increase in bankruptcies post-GFC. At another extreme of the spectrum, Van and Nguyen considered that competitive context, social influences, the understanding of managers about corporate social responsibility (CSR), and the internal environment of companies are the four drivers of CSR. The authors also argued that in the four drivers, competitive context has the strongest impact on adopting CSR. Third, last but not least, various papers focus on an important aspect of public finance. For an example, Pham, Pham, and Ly documented the effect of double taxation treaties on the bilateral trade of Vietnam with ASEAN member states, thereby making an extensive comparison with its EU partner countries. Their findings indicate the significant contributions of the tax treaties to Vietnam’s trade performance, not exclusively with ASEAN but also with EU partner countries. In addition, regarding public finance for Vietnam, Nguyen, Vo, Ho, and Vo investigated the contribution of fiscal decentralisation to economic growth across provinces in Vietnam. For the first time in Vietnam, the fiscal decentralisation index together its two subcomponents, including fiscal importance and fiscal autonomy, are developed. Findings from this paper indicate that while fiscal importance and an overall level of fiscal decentralisation have provided negative impact on provincial economic growth, fiscal autonomy has a positive impact on economic growth across provinces in Vietnam.

This special issue focuses on a gamut of topics ranging from monetary policy to corporate governance in emerging economies. Of the eleven papers it includes, five were selected from the II International Conference on Economics and Finance (ICEF-II) in Bengaluru, India.

Presents research on corporate governance from a number of countries across the world, including the United States, Spain, Malaysia, Israel and others. This title examines many important corporate governance mechanisms, such as board characteristics, ownership structure, legal protection of shareholders, and annual general meetings.

This book showcases recent academic work on contemporary issues in financial institutions and markets. It covers a broad range of topics, highlighting the diverse nature of academic research in banking and finance. As a consequence the contributions cover a wide range of issues across a broad spectrum, including: capital structure arbitrage, credit rating agencies, credit default swap spreads, market power in the banking industry and stock returns. This timely collection offers fresh insights and understandings into the ongoing debates within and between the academic and professional finance communities. This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Finance.

The lasting turmoil associated with the unprecedented pandemic, triggered by the novel corona virus COVID-19, has dragged the world into a mud of uncertainty. Fiscal stimulation, interest rate cuts, global supply-chain redeployment, "pandemic bond" and circuit breakers kicked in and the world is responding to this great challenge. But how can finance and economic research help the world under such circumstances? This book dwells on this new area of research and tries to understand how pandemics impact the economic and financial ecosystem of both emerging and advanced economies. Lessons learnt from the experience of previous pandemics maybe presented and discussed through drawing on policy lessons to date. By gathering research on political economy, geopolitical issues, behavioral finance, international institutional responses and medical and health issues resulting from pandemics, the chapters in this edited volume help in expanding the knowledge of social and economic consequences of the pandemic as well as set the foundation for future research. This book would benefit scholars, policy makers and entrepreneurs worldwide as a valuable archive of research on pandemics. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Emerging Markets Finance and Trade.

This book fills the gap between theories and practices of corporate governance in emerging markets by providing the reader with an in-depth understanding of governance mechanisms, practices and cases in these markets. It is an invaluable resource not only for academic researchers and graduate students in law, economics, management and finance but also for people practicing governance such as lawmakers, policymakers and international organizations promoting best governance practices in emerging countries. Investors can benefit from this book to better understand of these markets and to make judicious investment decisions.