The complexities and contradictions of ‘green’ finance demand multidimensional perspectives in critical socioeconomic research. Current studies often remain fragmented, focusing either on global financial structures or micro-level practices without fully integrating both. This essay advocates for a more integrated analytical approach, employing three components: constructions, cleavages, and complementarities. At the micro-level, green finance is constructed by diverse actors, influencing macro-level financial governance and capital flows. Conversely, macro-structural shifts, driven by geopolitical and institutional dynamics, shape micro-level activities forging new alliances and oppositions – cleavages. Since the responses of actors and their institutional context to green finance are diverse, new institutional and agentic complementarities emerge. How green finance alters the relationship between financial markets and political-economic institutions, and how this unfolds across national economies, shapes our understanding of capitalist varieties and the emergence of new actors and networks. The essay contends that linking these dimensions and integrating micro- and macro-approaches enables scholarship to pursue a shared understanding of green finance and its (in)capacities to confront socioecological crises under financial capitalism.

This article offers two novel backtests to evaluate the adequacy of well-known systemic risk measures such as CoVaR, MES, SES, and SRISK. Both the new backtests are robust to estimation risk (i.e., their null distributions remain invariant in the presence of estimation risk). While existing backtest is consistent against divergence from the null hypothesis up to a finite order, the article shows that the new backtests are fully consistent. The real-world implications brought by the new backtests are economically significant as they reveal significantly more cases of inadequate systemic risk modeling among the major financial institutions.

This study presents the design and validation of an organizational attachment scale that integrates Bowlby’s attachment theory into the analysis of workplace behavior. Its goal is to offer organizations a rigorous and reliable tool to assess how attachment styles influence professional dynamics, such as interpersonal relations, stress management, collaboration, job satisfaction, and team performance. The theoretical relevance lies in explaining how individuals form, maintain, or avoid emotional bonds with colleagues, supervisors, and the organization itself, insights that are essential for enhancing both employee well-being and organizational effectiveness.

The research responds to the transition from Taylorist management models to contemporary “quantum” paradigms, where flexibility, complexity, and human factors are central, and organizations operate in BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible) environments. Using a quantitative, non-experimental design, data were collected through LinkedIn from 204 team leaders and middle managers across various industries. Statistical validation included exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, internal consistency testing, and assessments of convergent and discriminant validity.

Results revealed a solid three-factor structure, secure, anxious, and avoidant attachment, showing high reliability and strong construct validity. These findings confirm the instrument’s effectiveness in distinguishing attachment styles in professional contexts and highlight their influence on emotional regulation, communication, engagement, and performance. The study’s originality lies in creating the first psychometric tool in Spain specifically tailored to organizational settings, addressing workplace hierarchies and norms. It thus advances theoretical understanding and provides a practical framework for cultivating healthier, more resilient, and productive organizational cultures.

The purpose of this study is to reveal the impact of pilot free trade zones (PFTZs) on local governance quality (LGQ) to provide a reference for driving governance reforms in China. Based on provincial panel data from 2004 to 2020 in China, the impact of the establishment of PFTZs on LGQ is analyzed by employing the multi-period difference-in-difference (DID) method. The results show that the establishment of PFTZs can significantly enhance the governance quality of local governments, but there is heterogeneity in location and establishment batches. PFTZs improve LGQ through the effects of institutional spillover, factor allocation, and talent agglomeration. FDI spillover can partially substitute for promoting the effect of PFTZs on LGQ, and economic growth pressures can distort the positive effect of PFTZs on LGQ. Therefore, policymakers should clarify the functional positioning of PFTZs and leverage their effects, which are institutional spillover, factor allocation, and high-end factor agglomeration, to enhance LGQ.

We exploit heterogeneity in decreasing returns to scale (DRS) parameters across mutual funds to analyze the importance of scalability for investors’ capital allocation decisions. We find strong evidence that steeper DRS attenuate flow sensitivity to performance. We calibrate a rational model of active fund management and show that a large fraction of cross-sectional variation in assets-under-management is due to investors anticipating the effects of scale on return performance. We conclude that DRS play a key role in achieving equilibrium in the intermediated investment management market.

This article examines how critical minerals (CM) supply security has been absorbed into the evolving concept of national security underpinning foreign investment screening (FIS), using Australia’s treatment of Chinese CM investment as a case study. It argues that FIS now functions as a tool of strategic alignment through selective, opaque restrictions under the logic of friend-shoring. This shift raises structural tensions with Australia’s obligations under international investment agreements (IIAs). Through analysis of Australia’s FIS regime, its implementation shaped by a CM friend-shoring strategy, and potential conflicts with its IIAs with China, the article situates Australia within a broader global trend in which the expansion of FIS increasingly challenges the coherence of international investment law. It offers a novel conceptualization of FIS as a legal expression of the geoeconomic turn and proposes recommendations for reconciling strategic regulatory discretion with treaty-based commitments in an era of contested globalization.

Mixed markets can enhance welfare compared to full public or private provision. However, this welfare gain depends on the extent to which market distortions exist. Recent literature demonstrates distortions in mixed long-term care markets worldwide. Our study explores potential distortions in the Dutch institutional market. While all Dutch residential nursing homes are non-profit, for-profit organisations, including private equity (PE) firms, have increasingly entered the market, offering round-the-clock care provided in home-like settings as an alternative to non-profit residential care.

We analysed claims data from 2017–2021 for dementia patients aged 70 and older using multinomial logit and Cox Proportional Hazards models. Specifically, we compared risk selection, upgrading, and care quality (measured by avoidable hospitalisations and mortality) between for-profit and non-profit providers.

Our findings do not suggest increased risk selection, higher upgrading, or lower care quality by for-profit (PE-owned) providers compared to non-profit providers. Consequently, we did not find evidence of strong market distortions in the Dutch institutional long-term care market. These results contrast with the existing international literature, suggesting that adverse incentives in the Netherlands may be influenced more by the way care is provided (in home-like settings versus in residential nursing homes) and financing structures rather than ownership type alone.