Information and communication technologies, road freight transport, and environmental sustainability

This study examines the relationship of auditor tenure and audit quality in four European countries, namely Germany, France, Italy and Spain, with the innovative GMM (Generalized Methods of Moments) model during the period from 2005 to 2013.
Two GMM methods are used with two alternative definitions of crisis – the main and the robustness method. The results agree regardless of the fact that some of the control variables are excluded in the robustness test.
The results support the finding that in Spain, there is an impact of auditors’ long-term tenure on discretionary accruals, affecting auditors’ quality and independence indirectly. In addition, the crisis affected Germany and France as far as the change in negative and positive values of GDP is concerned. In this respect, the crisis affected the above two countries when the years before and after the crisis are considered as a robustness check. The results contain important implications for accountant regulators and policy makers.

East African firms are experiencing economic growth and are attracting foreign investment in the form of equity capital and loans. However, there are concerns about whether the structure of the capital and managerial ownership of these firms can influence their growth. The study examined the relationship between capital structure and firm value in East African countries and how managerial ownership influences this relationship. Sixty-five (65) listed firms in East Africa were selected for the study. The study employed a GMM estimation technique. The evidence showed that leverage has a significantly negative impact on the value of firms in East Africa, suggesting that higher debt would result in a decrease of firm value. The implication of this result is that firms can increase their value by reducing their leverage level. Moreover, the study found that managerial ownership had an inverse and significant impact on the relationship between leverage and firm value. The conclusion is that leverage decreases the value of firms in East Africa. Another conclusion is that owner-managers can use debt capital more effectively to increase firm value than non-owner managers. The implication of this result is that firms managed by owners can borrow more for their operations because it would increase the value of the firms. This study is the first to examine how managerial ownership moderates the relationship between capital structure and the value of firms in East Africa, which has a unique political, social, cultural and economic environment.

This study aims to provide insight on the nexus between innovation, economic growth and CO2 emissions. In order to achieve this, data on potential factors such as innovation, environmental taxes, research and development (R&D) spending, electricity production, population size, high-technology exports and prices of photovoltaic systems are collected for the sample of the leading innovative countries over the period from 1990 to 2014. Based on a cointegrated panel methodology and a vector error correction model, the long-run, as well as the short-run dynamics of all possible combinations between the variables under study, are estimated. The results reveal that except for China, economic growth is mainly driven by electricity production, population size, CO2 emissions and R&D spending. However, innovation was found to have lesser effect on economic growth. In addition to that, the authors found evidence in favor of CO2 emissions being affected positively by population size and prices of photovoltaic systems and negatively by environmental taxes, high-technology exports, R&D spending and innovation. Moreover, on the contrary to population size, well-being is positively affected by CO2 emission and R&D spending.