This study examines the short-run associations between financial development, financial access, and economic growth in Algeria, Egypt, Kuwait, Morocco, and Tunisia during 2004–2024. Financial depth and physical access to banking services are measured using separate indices constructed through principal component analysis. Using a balanced panel of five countries, the study estimates a dynamic fixed-effects model with country and year effects and Driscoll–Kraay standard errors. The findings indicate a negative association between changes in financial development and real GDP growth, while changes in financial access and gross capital formation exhibit positive associations. Sensitivity analyses excluding 2020 and Kuwait preserve the directions of these associations, although statistical significance weakens when Kuwait is excluded. The results highlight differences between financial depth and physical banking access, while the small sample, potential endogeneity, and measurement limitations preclude causal interpretations. The study offers cautious evidence on financial–growth relationships in selected MENA economies.

This study investigates the conceptual and thematic relationship between environmental and sustainability reporting through a descriptive bibliometric analysis. The search phrase used to collect relevant data from Web of Science was designed to encompass two sets of terms: broader sustainability-reporting methodology on one side and environmental or climate-related reporting terminology on the other. The final dataset includes 437 papers, covering the period from 1994 to 2025, analysed with Biblioshiny in R through thematic mapping and thematic evolution across three periods (1994–2013, 2014–2023, 2024–2025; 31, 283 and 123 records) and compared with the broader sustainability literature. Environmental-reporting terms such as environmental reporting and environmental disclosure sit in the same thematic clusters as sustainability-reporting and ESG terms, and author keywords diversify over time, with ESG, ESG disclosure, greenwashing and board gender diversity increasing significantly in 2024–2025 (governance disclosure weakly). Publication growth and thematic diversification coincide in time with the NFRD, the TCFD recommendations, the CSRD and the establishment of the ISSB; these are bibliometric associations, not evidence of regulatory causation. Because every record contains both vocabularies by construction, the findings describe vocabulary change within the intersection corpus and not the full history of either domain. The study contributes a map of how environmental and sustainability-reporting concepts have been combined in this literature.

The rapid growth of online loans and Buy-Now Pay-Later (BNPL) services in Indonesia requires a deeper understanding of the factors driving consumer borrowing decisions beyond traditional financial knowledge. This study investigates the influence of two key behavioral biases: overconfidence and anchoring bias, on individuals’ decisions to engage with digital lending platforms. Focusing on a sample of 258 middle- to lower-income individuals in the Greater Jakarta area in Indonesia, the research employed Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) on cross-sectional, self-reported survey data to empirically test the relative association of these biases and financial literacy with the decision to use online loans/BNPL. The results demonstrate that all three factors are statistically significant predictors of the decision to use online loans/BNPL services. Anchoring bias was found to have the most substantial and significant effect, indicating that borrowers’ decisions are strongly influenced by initial numeric cues, such as introductory rates or pre-filled loan amounts. Both overconfidence bias and financial literacy also show significant, though comparatively smaller, influence. These findings challenge the conventional narrative that financial knowledge alone is sufficient for responsible financial behavior, suggesting that within this sample, anchoring bias is more strongly associated with digital lending decisions than financial literacy. The study concludes by encouraging a paradigm shift in consumer protection and financial education, recommending targeted programs that prioritise psychological awareness and behavioral interventions to mitigate biases, and to promote a holistic approach to financial well-being.

Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) has evolved in recent years as an integrating architecture of company risk exposures; however, the existence of a formal risk framework is not automatically a guarantee of proper functional integration, efficient usage of risk information in decision-making processes, identification of risk interdependencies, development of adaptive capacities or usage of risk signals for predictive monitoring.
This article examines the differences between risk architecture, process maturity and functional capabilities and whether modern research suggests the replacement of ERM or its functions through a portfolio of capabilities. The study combines bibliometric performance assessment and science mapping using Biblioshiny on a final selection of 702 documents, thematic content analysis and a separate comparative scrutiny of selected professional and regulatory frameworks. The bibliometric results indicate that risk management and ERM are still the fundamental conceptual center, however, artificial intelligence, resilience, dynamic capabilities and digital transformation are becoming more differentiated concepts after 2021. Analysis shows that enterprise-wide integration is the most common area (58.4%), but four important temporal shifts are emerging: resilience/adaptation, analytics/AI/digitalization, sustainability/ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) and risk-strategy-performance integration. The regulatory stream is focused on concepts like board accountability, risk appetite, multi-horizon and scenario analysis, operational resilience, third-party dependencies, data governance, ongoing monitoring and lifecycle risk management.
The paper therefore theorizes the next generation of risk management as a functional extension rather than replacement of key components of the discipline and proposes the distinction between ERM architecture – ERM process maturity – ERM capability development.

This study examines organisational beneficiaries’ behavioural intention to use specialised financial-accounting platforms in Romania through an extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) framework. Six explanatory constructs are considered: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, perceived credibility, and perceived risk. The analysis draws on 285 valid questionnaire responses from companies operating in Romania and applies partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to a pooled sample. Perceived credibility (β = 0.431) and performance expectancy (β = 0.263) have the largest positive path coefficients. Social influence (β = 0.039) and perceived risk (β = 0.058) exhibit smaller positive coefficients reported as statistically significant, whereas effort expectancy and facilitating conditions are not statistically significant. The model explains 47.2% of the variance in intention to use (R² = 0.472). The positive perceived-risk coefficient warrants cautious interpretation because higher scores on its indicators represent greater perceived risk. The study contributes context-specific evidence on technology-acceptance intentions in financial-accounting services and identifies perceived credibility and performance expectancy as salient predictors in the analysed sample. The cross-sectional, pooled-sample design does not support claims about causal effects or regional differences.

This study provides a bibliometric analysis of 64 academic publications and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the OECD context. The analysis maps the development of this focused research area and identifies the leading authors, countries, publication sources, and key research themes. Citation analysis, co-authorship, keyword cooccurrence, and bibliographic coupling are used to examine the structure and evolution of the literature.
The results indicate that research is mainly concentrated on key themes related to the impact of policies, taxation determinants, economic growth, and firm-level responses. Countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, and Italy emerge as leading contributors in terms of citations and scientific output, while journals such as International Tax and Public Finance and Regional Studies play a central role in knowledge dissemination. The keyword co-occurrence analysis highlights the importance of terms such as “impact”, “policy”, and “taxation”, reflecting the dominant research focus on regulatory and economic effects.
The implications of tax rules for mergers and acquisitions activities indicate a developing research direction. The main findings note that M&A activity is influenced by fiscal and regulatory conditions, with higher corporate taxation generally discouraging transactions. By systematically mapping this literature, the study identifies the main patterns and research gaps linking taxation and M&A decisions and provides a basis for future research in the OECD context.

The acceleration of digital transformation and the increasing organizational focus on sustainability are driving a new phase in the development of ERP systems, characterized by the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and functionalities geared towards sustainable performance. In this context, while traditional ERP solutions enable the integration and management of organizational processes, they are becoming insufficient for supporting data-driven decision-making and effectively monitoring sustainability goals.This paper investigates whether the degree of integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into ERP systems, the perceived improvement in decision-making and the intention to expand AI functionalities are associated with users’ perception of the contribution of AI-enabled ERP systems to sustainability. The research is based on a quantitative study conducted via a structured questionnaire with closed-ended items, distributed through social media to a convenience sample of 90 ERP users. The data were analyzed through descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations and a multiple linear regression model.
The model explains about 17% of the variance in the perceived contribution of AI to sustainability (adjusted R² = 0.170). The intention to expand AI functionalities is the only statistically significant predictor (B = 0.175, p = 0.030), whereas the degree of AI integration (p = 0.082) and the perceived improvement of decision-making (p = 0.156) are not significant at the 5% level, so the research hypotheses are only partially supported. The findings are exploratory and associative; they suggest that users’ openness to extending AI functionalities is linked to a more favorable view of AI’s sustainability benefits, which points to the need to adapt ERP systems to evolving technological and environmental requirements.

The transition toward sustainable economic development and climate neutrality has intensified the importance of understanding the relationship between fiscal sustainability and green transition dynamics within European economies. In the context of the European Green Deal, REPowerEU strategy, and increasing fiscal pressures generated by economic instability, public debt expansion, and environmental transition costs, governments are required to balance environmental objectives with long-term fiscal stability. The present study investigates the impact of renewable energy consumption, environmental taxation, government expenditure, and macroeconomic performance on fiscal sustainability in selected European economies, namely Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, during the 2015–2024 period. The research employs a comparative econometric framework based on Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression models estimated separately for each country using annual data collected from Eurostat databases. The empirical findings indicate that renewable energy consumption and environmental taxation exert heterogeneous effects on government fiscal balance across the analysed economies. Romania and Hungary display comparatively stronger relationships between renewable energy transition and fiscal sustainability, while Germany and Romania record more significant effects associated with environmental taxation mechanisms. Government expenditure and real GDP per capita emerge as important determinants of fiscal balance dynamics, confirming the strong interdependence between macroeconomic performance, fiscal capacity, and environmental transition policies. The econometric results also reveal substantial differences among the analysed countries regarding public indebtedness, renewable energy integration, and fiscal resilience. The study contributes to the literature on sustainable public finance by integrating fiscal, environmental, and macroeconomic variables into a unified comparative framework capable of capturing the interaction between green transition policies and fiscal sustainability. The findings underline the necessity of adopting differentiated and country-specific fiscal strategies capable of supporting environmental transition objectives while maintaining long-term macroeconomic stability and public finance sustainability within the European Union context.

This paper investigates whether volatility regime shifts in European equity markets are associated with changes in cross-market stress transmission. Using daily returns for seven major European equity indices (1998-2026), plus two extension panels adding Sweden, Denmark and Poland, we estimate EGARCH (1,1)-Student-t volatility models, classify markets into low-, medium- and high-volatility regimes via a hidden Markov model, and measure dynamic connectedness with a rolling-window VAR-based variance-decomposition approach. High-volatility regimes cluster strongly across markets (the same-day coincidence rate of regime-entry dates is 24-33% across panels, against a 1% placebo benchmark), and total connectedness rises significantly before, during and for several weeks after system-wide regime shifts, even after controlling for connectedness persistence. Net-transmission concentration increases during high-volatility periods even as gross transmission becomes more diffuse; France, Germany and the Netherlands are persistent net transmitters of stress, while Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Spain are persistent net receivers. A European Market Stress Transmission Index (EMSTI), combining regime probability, connectedness, and network concentration, peaks at well-documented stress episodes: the 2015 Greek/China selloff and the 2022 Russia-Ukraine energy shock. The findings hold up in nine of ten robustness checks. The one substantive qualification: once global risk factors (VIX, US equity returns, EUR/USD and US interest rates) are controlled for, part of the apparent pre- and post-shift rise in connectedness reflects global risk sentiment rather than a purely European phenomenon; only the contemporaneous shift-window effect is unambiguously European. The results support regime-sensitive connectedness indicators as a complement to, not a replacement for, existing financial-stability monitoring tools.

This paper examines the relationship between insurer conduct, consumer protection, and sustainable performance, with particular attention to the Romanian insurance market. Insurer conduct is approached as a multidimensional concept encompassing product governance, information and distribution practices, claims handling, complaints and remediation, treatment of vulnerable consumers, remuneration, organizational culture, and the use of technology. Drawing on the literature on service quality, consumer trust and retention, corporate governance, and insurance regulation, the paper develops a conceptual transmission mechanism linking internal governance and incentives to business processes, consumer outcomes, trust and retention, and ultimately sustainable performance. The conceptual analysis is complemented by descriptive evidence on the structure and recent development of the Romanian insurance market and by a discussion of insurers’ broader role within the domestic financial system. Building on this framework, the paper proposes a multidimensional architecture for conduct monitoring covering product governance and value for money, distribution, claims handling, complaints and remediation, accessibility and vulnerability, and internal governance. As an operational extension of this architecture, the paper introduces the Insurance Conduct Quality Index (ICQI), an original conceptual monitoring instrument designed to integrate multiple dimensions of insurer conduct and consumer outcomes within a structured assessment framework. The ICQI is conceived as a monitoring and diagnostic tool rather than a causal model, with its empirical calibration and validation left for future research. The analysis suggests that insurer conduct should be viewed not only as a regulatory compliance and consumer protection issue, but also as a component of effective governance and long-term value creation. From this perspective, improvements in conduct may entail short-term implementation costs while potentially contributing to stronger consumer trust, higher retention, lower reputational and operational costs, greater portfolio stability, and more sustainable financial intermediation.