Fakhar -e- Alam

This study was conducted to understand the impact of Working Capital Management on Corporate Cash Holding in the context of conventional and Islamic banks in Pakistan. In this study, we used the panel data of 31 banks in which 24 are conventional banks while 7 are Islamic banks. In this study, the data was collected from the annual reports of both conventional and Islamic banks from 2011 to 2017. The data was analyzed through various statistical techniques i.e. Descriptive Statistic and Correlation, Fixed effects, Random effects and Hausman test. The working capital management proxy such as cash flow ratio has positive and statistically insignificant effect on corporate cash holding of Conventional banks, while firm size and leverage show positive and statistically significant effects on corporate cash holding. Similarly, the cash flow ratio shows a positive and statistically insignificant effect on the corporate cash holding of Islamic banks in Pakistan and a positive and statistic...

The primary motive behind this study is to examine the relationship among students’ practices of self-leadership strategies, self-efficacy, and performance outcomes levels in the online learning environment. Two hundred and seventeen students, enrolled at a university level in different degree courses at the graduate and postgraduate level, participated in this study. We follow a two-step structural equation modelling approach to assess the relationship between the proposed variables of the model. Results reveal that students with a high level of self-efficacy tend to have more effective performance in uncertain or unpredictable situations. Also, when students show a high level of self-leadership in their online learning, their level of self-efficacy and performance satisfaction has increased. This study contributes to the informal self-leadership emerging research especially in developing young countries. This study also carefully observes and spots the evidence for future research...

The leisure sector represents the fastest and among one of the largest growing economic sectors of consumer spending. However, our understanding and knowledge of consumer psychology of recreation and leisure are yet limited to the social and economic significance of the under-research phenomenon. Therefore this study investigated the relevance of recreational marketing activities in leisure consumers in terms of their preferences. Through an online survey 300 responses were collected from the respondents till closing date. Confirmatory Factor Analysis were conducted with help of AMOS 24 software. Significant differences were found in terms of importance, and place, between male and female students. Moreover, higher mean observed for male students than females in terms of these sub-dimensions social, access, and place. This study offer many practical and managerial applications to marketers and policy makers by identifying the important dimension of leisure activities.

The study examines the nexus between FDI, institutional quality, and financial development in Pakistan. We believe that it is a novel research attempt as it covers both democratic and non-democratic regimes. We use linear ARDL methodology to predict the nature of the relationship as a baseline estimator and Granger causality as a robustness check for further validation of results. The study covers the period from 1990 to 2018. We find that both FDI and institutional quality positively affect financial development in Pakistan. We find bi-directional causality between financial development and institutional quality and a unidirectional casualty between FDI and institutional quality. Likewise, we also find a unidirectional causality between FDI and financial development, running from financial development to FDI. The study has some managerial implications for policymakers to strengthen the country’ macroeconomic environment and to encourage institutional reforms to boost up the confide...

Objective This study investigates life expectancy and trade openness in China for the period 1960–2018. Methods We purposed a theoretical model that is tested for China by applying regime-switching regression. Results Our findings suggest that trade openness increases life expectancy in China; trade affects life expectancy from two aspects; firstly, trade expansion and industrialization lead to high economic activities and resulted in raise the income of the people in society leading to improve life expectancy. Secondly, industrial expansion increases the CO2 emissions which leads to imposes a negative implication on human health and thus reduces life expectancy. Conclusion Thus, the net effect of trade liberalization depends on the value of income effect and volume of CO2 emissions. Therefore, the government needs to support the trade policies which causes a low level of CO2 emissions, the government may provide incentives to exports and industrialists to adopted green energy in th...

Objective This study investigates the nexus between household health expenditure, CO2 emissions and environmental pollution in China. We analyzed the asymmetric dynamic relationship between CO2 emissions, environmental pollution and household health expenditure for the period 1990 to 2019 in China. Methods This study adopted nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) and Granger causality following the diagnostic test. Furthermore, we applied Dickey–Fuller (ADF), PP unit root tests, Zivot and Andrews test for structural breaks in our analysis. The NARDL is the most suitable econometric technique for estimations, especially if the asymmetric relationship exists among the variables. NARDL technique is capable to explore the dynamic relationship between CO2 emissions, environmental pollution and household health expenditure. Results The empirical results verify the asymmetric nexus between CO2 emissions, environmental pollution and household health expenditure in the context of C...

In 21 century the climate change has become an important issues for businesses as well as stockholders. Consequently, to reduce carbon emission financial institutions offer green financing to businesses to mitigate this issue. However, the availability of green loan remains the important case. Therefore this research aims to know how this financing gap can be minimized. A panel design dataset was collected which consists of green financing data for the period 2009 to 2015 from 24 banks operating in Pakistan. We applied Two-stage Least Square Regression Analysis for data analysis. The results revealed that green loans are a less risky investments. Further, the findings also provides useful information to managers who look for grow their business loan and minimize default risk. This study contributes to the existing literature in green financing by filling the gap, particularly for developing countries through empirical evidence. The finding suggests that banks must invest more in gre...

The financial system development has got considerable attention due to its association with the environment of the country. To address the apprehension of the researchers about the effect of the determinants of the financial system on the environmental quality of high-income developed countries, we analyze the data of twenty developed countries with sound and strong financial systems for the period 2001 to 2018. We consider both banking development and stock market development as the main key determinants of the financial system. We employ numerous modern-day penal data estimation techniques, namely Dynamic Penal GMM in both linear and non-linear form, Common Correlated Effect Mean Group (CCEMG), and Dynamic Fixed Effect for capturing the issues of heterogeneity, endogeneity, and cross-sectional dependence. Our results show that banking development substantiates the environmental quality in high-income developed countries. The positive gesture of the banking development on environmental quality could be the reason for the established environmentally friendly policies in the developed part of the world. Hence, we conclude that banking development in high-income developed countries significantly reduces the emissions of dangerous gases, which resultantly enhances the environmental quality. The study reveals an insignificant and tenuous impact of the market development on the environmental quality that might be due to the adoption of cleaner technologies by firms in the developed world that are environmentally friendly. The results of our long-term estimations also predict the significant effect of banking development and an insignificant effect of the market development on environmental quality. In addition, our results also demonstrate an inverted U-shaped relationship of the determinants of the financial system and environmental quality. More institutional and legal initiatives must be made for a more robust banking and stock market development framework by the policy makers with a view to substantiating the quality of the environment to a more sustainable level in the developed world.

The study explores the causality between oil production, industrial production, energy consumption, and unemployment in Iran. We use time-series data, spanning the period 1990–2017 and apply VECM method for the data analysis and our findings suggest that crude oil production significantly causes unemployment through industrial production and energy consumption channel both in the short and long run, while energy consumption and industrial production affect unemployment in the short run only. Furthermore, energy consumption also determines industrial production showing energy as a supplement to the industries. The oil production in Iran substantially contributes to the country’s exports and main energy main input to the local industries. Industrial production increases energy consumption and reduces unemployment in the country. Therefore, the government should formulate appropriate policies, which take into account the fact, that changes in oil production have both short-run as well ...

Social entrepreneurship has soon recognized as important factor in socio-economic development. So far little research has been done in the context of developing young countries like Pakistan. This study investigate how institutional factors affect social entrepreneurial activities in Pakistan. Data from GEM were used for analysis. Due to the binary nature of the dependent variables, we used logistic regression models to test the hypothesis using the ReLogit estimation technique. This study generates key important results. The findings indicated that informal institutional factors influence more the likelihood of being social entrepreneur than formal institutional factors. The empirical findings provide useful information for government policies on promoting social entrepreneurship.

Online trade has shown a sharp increase since the outbreak of pandemic Coronavirus. The COVID-19 has affected almost all financial and business activities around the world, even in Pakistan. It has changed the way consumers used to shop before the pandemic outbreak. Many companies until recently have developed and created their online stores and making up the most of their sales using internet channel. Consumer have no other choice but shop from home. In this research study, we discuss the impact of COVID-19 on e-business practices and consumer behavior in Pakistan. The theory of acceptance model has been applied where consumer behavior, e-business, and COVID-19, and posted as a key construct of the proposed research model. Structural Equation Modelling approach has been used to examine the interrelationship of variables of research. We applied two-step recommended Structural Equation Modelling approach, first, validate the constructs by using Confirmatory Factor Analysis, and then ...

Banking industries are blamed to be among the major factors that affect global climate change both directly and indirectly. The green banking concept has emerged in the last decade to trigger the adverse impact the banks put on a healthy environment. However, research regarding the adoption of green banking practices in developing economies, especially in Pakistan, is scarce. While environment friendly businesses are promoted by the government including in the banking industry. Green banking practices not only adopted by the business operations but also to practice it at policy-making level. It also encourages green project financing to ascertain environmental efficiency. Based on SRI theory, this study investigates the relationship between green banking practices and their direct and indirect impact on environmental performance. Structural equation modelling approach has been adopted to test the relationships of variables of the study. The impact of the green practices has been recognized much greater and influential in promoting green environment regarding policy-making and investments in green projects. Results reveal that there is a significant influence of policy, daily operations, and investments on the adoption of green banking practices. Interested parties can adopt the study proposed framework to access and identify the factors which can promote justified level of green banking practices in the country. Moreover, this study may help in providing rich updated literature in green banking to speed up future research in the same area.

Urge of self-leadership has become ubiquitous. Self-leadership strategies has emerged to help individual, of which, when, effectively practiced, can lead to the path of rewarding performance and self-motivation. This study discuss the importance of management style introduced within the organisation and its ability to demonstrate effective self-leadership with the aim to organization objective achievement by taking the motivation of individual's into consideration as an important factor, which could be beneficial to the organization to gaining a strong position in this modern competitive business world.