Green financing for sustainable development: Insights from multiple cases of Vietnamese commercial banks

Although the public sector is seen as the main party responsible for taking action on climate change and sustainable development, private commercial banks are in a unique position to support or shift the funding focus on green investment. By employing a qualitative research approach based on six commercial banks, this paper aims to investigate the current practices of how commercial banks are contributing to advance green business initiatives. Accordingly, this research examines and identifies the facilitators and challenges in domestic and foreign commercial banks in Vietnam which support green business initiatives. In addition to addressing the recent calls for the investigation of the role of commercial banks in facilitating green finance, our study expands the emerging literature by demonstrating the current efforts of Vietnam's commercial banks in fostering green finance during the Covid-19 pandemic.     

Armed conflicts and women's authority in intra-household decision making

This paper evaluates the extent to which armed conflicts alter women's intra-household decision making in 51 countries over the past three decades (1990–2018). Exploiting the variations both within and across districts in the timing of battles, we uncover adverse consequences of armed conflict on women's engagement in household decisions on both financial and non-financial aspects. Specifically, a one standard deviation increase in the number of battles (equivalent to an increase of 5.1 battles) reduces the composite financial and non-financial decision indices of women by 2.32% and 1.34% relative to the sample averages. Breaking down the decision-making indices by looking at the underlying items, we further find that the declines in women's intra-household decision making come from reductions in all aspects of financial and non-financial domains.     

Unveiling the role of entrepreneurial knowledge and cognition as antecedents of entrepreneurial intention: a meta-analytic study

Although entrepreneurial intention has been regarded as one of the most important drivers of creativity, innovation, and performance in firms, a comprehensive framework that integrates the relevant influential factors has yet to be developed. Drawing on the theory of planned behavior and the social cognitive career theory, this study investigates the critical antecedents, mediators, and moderators of entrepreneurial intention. A meta-analytic approach is employed to validate the proposed hypotheses, and 89 primary studies with a total sample size of 51,919 are analyzed. The results indicate the existence of differences in the manner in which entrepreneurial knowledge influences cognitive antecedents in the individuals who participate in new ventures. Furthermore, personal attitude and self-efficacy play a vital role in predicting entrepreneurial intention. Demographic characteristics (such as age, gender, and education background) significantly moderate the relationship between cognitive antecedents and entrepreneurial intention, indicating that men tend to adopt more entrepreneurial behaviors than women, that older individuals with more positive attitudes have a higher propensity to start ventures than younger ones, and that those with higher education attainment tend to have lower self-employment. These findings offer several recommendations. They could provide valuable references for further academic work, which should aim to extend and validate them. The findings are also very beneficial for professional experts tasked with the design of effective programs for enhancing entrepreneurial behavior.

     

Systematic ESG exposure and stock returns: Evidence from the United States during the 1991–2019 period

Using a sample of US stocks over the period 1991–2019, we test whether stocks with high exposure to a social index exhibit high returns. Using a univariate analysis, our in-sample results show that stocks with high sensitivities to the MSCI KLD 400 Social Index underperform stocks with low sensitivities by an annual risk-adjusted performance of 7.02%. The negative premium is also larger in the post-crisis period of 2007–2019 and is equal to 10.25%. The out-of-sample results offer, however, only weak evidence of such a finding, with a risk-adjusted performance difference of merely −0.84% over the full sample period and no significant differences between the pre-crisis and post-crisis periods. In the multivariate regression, we find evidence of a negative relationship between exposure to the social index and stock performance. Moreover, we find that stocks with high exposure to the social index display a low corporate social responsibility score, a high Tobin’s Q, high long-term debt, a large size, high total risk, a high market beta, a high SMB coefficient, a low HML coefficient, and a small MOM coefficient.     

The role of learning motivation on financial knowledge among Vietnamese college students

Using survey data from 730 undergraduates in Vietnam, we find that learning motivation and its components, especially self-efficacy, finance learning value, and achievement goals, significantly correlate with students' financial literacy performance. In addition, these correlations are moderated by student characteristics, among which academic seniority, university type, parents' education, and extra math study during high school matter the most. Our results raise significant implications to policymakers, researchers, and educators that include understanding the role of motivation and incorporating it in financial literacy education and intervention programs and considering the moderation roles that individuals' characteristics play in the motivation-financial literacy link. We encourage more research in these areas.     

Climate-resilient practices and welfare impacts on rice-cultivating households in Vietnam: Does joint adoption of multiple practices matter?

Farmers have a long history of adjusting their production practices in response to changing production conditions. Using a multinomial endogenous treatment effects model that accounts for observable and unobservable heterogeneity, this study investigates the adoption and welfare impacts of climate-resilient practices on Vietnamese rice-cultivating households. We found evidence of clear and positive welfare impacts from the adoption of canal irrigation (CI) and the joint adoption of agricultural conservation practices (CP) and CI as the main adaptation strategies to increase water stress. More importantly, although farmers with access to CI systems obtained the highest returns, the joint adoption of multiple practices still had substantially high adoption rates and significantly positive effects on rice yield, rice revenue and household income. Our findings indicate that farms' and farmers' characteristics, market information and climatic conditions are generally the main factors driving rice farmers' decisions to adopt climate-resilient technologies, both individually and jointly. Follow-up policy interventions should focus on improving CI systems and promoting the joint adoption of climate-resilient technologies to improve rice farmers' well-being and enhance their resilience capacity to cope with incoming climatic uncertainty.     

Effects of social distancing policy on labor market outcomes

US workers receive unemployment benefits if they lose their job, but not for reduced working hours. In alignment with the benefits incentives, we find that the labor market responded to COVID-19 and related closure-policies mostly on the extensive (12 pp outright job loss) margin. Exploiting timing variation in state closure-policies, difference-in-differences (DiD) estimates show, between March 12 and April 12, 2020, employment rate fell by 1.7 pp for every 10 extra days of state stay-at-home orders (SAH), with little effect on hours worked/earnings among those employed. Forty percentage of the unemployment was due to a nationwide shock, rest due to social-distancing policies, particularly among “non-essential” workers.     

Agricultural commercialisation,asset growth and poverty in rural Vietnam

Poverty remains a substantial threat in rural areas of many developing countries, and solving this problem requires an in-depth understanding of the income generating capacity that determines poverty. This paper examines the impact of agricultural commercialisation on the capability of rural households to accumulate and productively use assets and reduce structural and multidimensional poverty. A longitudinal dataset of around 2000 households with a total of 9781 observations from five rural surveys undertaken in the period 2008–2017 in Vietnam is used. Results from a fixed effects regression with an instrumental variable and a control function approach show that agricultural commercialisation has a positive effect on the accumulation of assets and reduces multidimensional and structural poverty over time. However, the effect is not homogeneous and is larger for households that are not mainly engaged in rice commercialisation. This suggests that commercialisation can be a path out of poverty, especially if policy makers move towards utilising other crops instead of rice.     

Adapting to the new normal: A sustainable livelihood framework for the informal sectors during COVID-19

The extraordinary COVID-19 outbreak has heightened the existential dangers to the informal sector. This study explores the informal sector's tactics in Vietnam for mitigating the pandemic's effects and better adapting to the new normal. Using a sustainable livelihood approach (SLA) and multivariate model for ordered choices (MVOC) to conduct surveys on 513 subjects from the informal labor, our findings indicate that financial management is the most prevalent technique for mitigating the effects of COVID-19. Notably, the perception of the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on income and health is crucial to the adoption of mitigation efforts. The Vietnamese government, State Bank, and financial institutions should provide more help to the informal sector, particularly those operating in remote locations so that they can increase their resilience through mitigating measures. In parallel, the informal sector should participate in more deliberate forward mitigation planning in the anticipation of inevitable future shocks.     

Sanders Foods: Planning for Success—An Instructional Case*

This case describes the second-generation importer Sanders Foods, which requires improved profitability. A new CFO has been hired to improve profits and thereby increase the market value of the firm for a possible future sale. The firm's strategy, although still completely valid, has not been carried out as intended. The board of directors has reaffirmed the firm's strategy. The CFO and CEO have developed a five-year plan to implement the strategy; the plan has been approved by the board. The task for the CFO is to develop a bottom-up budget for next year that accomplishes the first year of the plan. The operational improvements to achieve the existing strategy with the next year's budget will be demanding, which means it will likely need to be frequently updated with forecasts. Students will be tested on their knowledge and skills in implementing a committed budget, complete with a process for forecasts.