This study employs variance ratios (VRs) to assess the roles of regulation and liquidity on cryptocurrency market efficiency, focusing on crypto-assets subject to varying degrees of regulation. Our findings reveal that cryptocurrencies supervised by FinCEN-licensed exchanges (IEO-L) exhibit market efficiency similar to SEC-regulated traditional stock offerings (IPOs). Conversely, noncompliant crypto-assets display higher market inefficiency. We also establish a connection between regulatory compliance and issuing entity reputation mechanisms. Our results indicate that compliance with existing regulatory norms enhances efficiency and reduces investor risks in crypto-assets. Furthermore, assets voluntarily adhering to regulatory norms can attain efficiency akin to government-regulated assets.

We demonstrate that investment income taxes incentivize capital allocation to the ecofriendly green sector away from the non-ecofriendly brown sector in a stylized economy. This tax reduces the arrival intensity of climate disasters, delivers the socially optimal allocation, and can be jointly implemented with a carbon tax, expanding policymakers’ toolkit to reduce climate disasters. Extending the model with heterogeneous investors, we show that investment income taxes can obtain support from a political majority and thereby relax political constraints faced by a carbon tax alone.

This article examines how realized variances predict cryptocurrency returns in the cross section using intraday data. We find that cryptocurrencies with higher variances exhibit lower returns in subsequent weeks. Decomposing total variances into signed jump and jump-robust variances reveals that the negative predictability is attributable to positive jump and jump-robust variances. The negative pricing effect is more pronounced for smaller cryptocurrencies with lower prices, less liquidity, more retail trading activities, and more positive sentiment. Our results suggest that cryptocurrency markets are unique because retail investors and preferences for lottery-like payoffs play important roles in the partial variance effects.

We show that firms’ left-tail risk positively predicts future returns of crash insurance. We proxy crash insurance with bear spreads, an option trading strategy that profits when extreme negative returns occur. Crash insurance for high (low) left-tail risk firms earns positive (negative) returns, suggesting that the downside protection it provides is not adequately priced. Our results are mainly explained by two types of underreaction: volatility underreaction in high left-tail risk portfolios and underreaction to the persistence of left-tail risk. Disagreement partially explains our results, but a risk-based approach does not.

In recent years, the variation in firms' tax-avoidance behavior has attracted a lot of attention, both theoretically and empirically. This study investigates the governance role of multiple large shareholders in firms' tax-avoidance behavior, using a sample of Chinese state-controlled listed firms over the period 2004–2016. We find that the ownership stake of a firm's largest shareholder is negatively associated with tax avoidance among state-controlled firms. Second, other large non-state shareholders negatively affect tax avoidance of state-controlled firms. The former effect is particularly strong when the local government is the controlling shareholder. Finally, differences in institutional quality influence the largest shareholder's tendency to engage in tax avoidance in state-controlled firms. For state-controlled firms, a better institutional environment elicits more tax avoidance and thus curtails minority-investor expropriation.

Using establishment-level data, we show that COVID-19 vaccinations boost business activity and firm performance in the United States. A 10-percent increase in vaccination rates results in a 4-percent to 6-percent increase in customer visits. We document the channels through which vaccinations increase store visits and the limits to the effect of vaccines on business activity. At the firm level, vaccinations increase sales and earnings, impact expansion decisions, and decrease probability of default, but the benefits vary across businesses. Vaccinations create private economic benefits to firms, shareholders, and employees, in addition to their intended public health benefits.

This Special Issue denotes the first comprehensive attempt to place business and human rights-related (BHR) developments in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region on the map of global discussions in BHR. The CEE is a geographical area that is historically, politically, socio-economically, geo-strategically and culturally distinct from other regions, including Western Europe. Hence, this Special Issue explores the region’s specific elements and factors and how they affect and influence the implementation and embedding of human rights in the practice of business enterprises in the region. The ‘Scholarly Articles’ and ‘Developments in the Field’ pieces collected in this issue highlight the promising and not-so-promising developments and practices of state institutions, business enterprises, and other actors. It documents the current situation in the region and outlines ideas and prospects for addressing the identified challenges over the next decade. As an introduction to the Special Issue, this editorial outlines the region’s leading trends and prospects in BHR. It reflects on persisting challenges and notes the region’s progress in BHR awareness, knowledge and capacity in recent decades.

In this article, we explore the impact of colliery closure programs across the nationalized British coal industry. We chart the regional disparities in these and the mobilization of community opposition to national protests, leading to the national miners’ strikes of 1972, 1974, and 1984–5. This article demonstrates how closures have changed the industrial politics of mining unions for miners, junior officials, and managers and have increasingly alienated NCB officials and mining communities. We demonstrate how this undermined the ideals of nationalization. This is examined through moral economic frameworks and within the context of changes to the UK’s energy mix, with implications for contemporary deliberations on public ownership, energy transitions, and regional development.

We use the introduction of satellite coverage of major retailers to study the capital market implications of unequal access to big data. Satellite data enabled sophisticated investors with access to such data to formulate profitable trading strategies, especially by targeting the upcoming reports of retailers with bad news for the quarter. The introduction of satellite data led to more informed short-selling activity, less informed individual buying activity, and lower stock liquidity around the reports of retailers with satellite coverage. We conclude that unequal access to big data can increase information asymmetry among market participants without immediately enhancing price discovery.