This study examines democracy as a moderator of the relationship between climate vulnerability and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in 132 developing countries from 1995 to 2023. Drawing on Dunning's OLI paradigm and Risk Theory, it argues that climate vulnerability reduces FDI by weakening the locational attractiveness of host economies and increasing the risks associated with long-term operations. Democracy matters less as a direct investment advantage than as a political–institutional condition shaping how foreign investors respond to climate-related risk. Based on a panel dataset, the empirical analysis shows that climate vulnerability is consistently associated with lower FDI inflows, whereas democracy has no robust independent effect. The interaction results indicate that the negative association between climate vulnerability and FDI is weaker at higher levels of democracy, suggesting that democratic institutions help reassure investors and mitigate the adverse investment effects of climate-related vulnerability.
Using three decades of United States (US) earnings announcements, this paper examines whether options trading before announcements predicts earnings news, immediate stock returns, and later returns. Total options volume combines calls and puts even though they have different information and trading motives. The relative balance of put and call trading is more informative about earnings news than total options activity is. The relation between call trading and announcement returns is significantly stronger after 2020 and remains stronger even when 2020 is excluded. This later-period strengthening is concentrated among stocks with unusually large recent daily gains and heavy trading, characteristics associated with speculative attention. Trend and unknown-date tests do not identify an abrupt 2020 break point; instead, they indicate a longer strengthening process. Options-market informativeness depends on whether investors trade calls or puts, which earnings outcome is predicted, and the market period.
Liquidity on a less-liquid sovereign bond market is visible enough that every dealer prices it into a quote and every asset manager shades a mandate around it, yet transient enough that the estimators built for the deepest curves do not transfer unchanged. We assemble a bond-level and segment-level liquidity panel for the Polish sovereign curve over 2005 to 2026 and treat liquidity as an object to be explained rather than as an input to curve fitting. Seven low-frequency measures, fixed-effects panels with Driscoll–Kraay inference, monetary-policy and primary-auction event studies, and a monthly aggregate price-of-liquidity regression let us ask what prices into bond spreads, into the segment-level supply channel, and into the aggregate term premium. Issue size narrows every venue-uncapped measure. Supply prices into liquidity through the stock of a segment and its residual-maturity concentration rather than through monthly issuance flow. The post-2020 retreat of the foreign buy-side is the strongest macro correlate of segment price impact, yet leaves the quoted spread untouched, a separation that the regulated venue’s cap on quoted spreads makes mechanical. In monthly aggregates the level of State Treasury debt and the debt-to-GDP ratio load on the term premium with a maturity gradient that rises from two to ten years, the signature of a preferred-habitat mechanism, and a mark-to-market exercise attributes about two and a half percent of the present value of the fixed-cash-flow sovereign universe to the supply-related term premium accumulated over the 2019 to 2025 debt expansion. The venue-capped quoted spread and the volume-scaled price-impact measures carry different and complementary information, which is the paper’s methodological message for less-liquid markets.
Sustainable development requires countries to advance Environmental, Social, Governance, and Financial (ESG+F) pillars in a balanced and dynamic manner. However, existing assessment models are predominantly static and often exclude the role of financial stability. This study introduces a dynamic ESG+F framework that evaluates national sustainability trajectories across 133 countries using Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC)-based weighting, transition matrices, and scenario simulations. The results reveal significant asymmetries in upward mobility: most countries exhibit persistence in their current sustainability quantile, while a limited subset shows strong improvement potential. Empirical findings show that improvements in social equity are particularly impactful, with Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities demonstrating the highest median performance difference (5.15) between improving and non-improving countries. Environmental enhancements have the strongest effect on group transitions, where a full improvement scenario leads to upward movement across all quantile categories and a 65.82-point increase in the composite ESG+F score. Financial improvements also display substantial influence, producing a 34.25-point gain and with transitions across multiple quantiles from a 30% increase, underscoring the enabling role of financial resilience. Country-level transition probabilities further highlight distinct upward trajectories, exemplified by Brazil’s high probability (0.86) of entering the top ESG+F quantile. Overall, the proposed framework offers both diagnostic and scenario-based policy support, guiding policymakers in prioritizing interventions that maximize quantile transitions and long-term sustainability outcomes. While the model captures dynamic performance trends, it is limited by the linearity assumption in scenario simulations and the categorical mapping of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into ESG+F dimensions.
