Brand names or trademarks carry incredible economic power and prestige. There is increasing recognition by world bodies that intellectual property (IP), whether manifested in patents, trademarks, copyrights or trade secrets, is highly valuable and must be protected through robust IP enforcement....

Country risk has become a topic of major concern for the international financial community over the last two decades. The importance of country ratings is underscored by the existence of several major country risk rating agencies, namely the Economist Intelligence Unit, Euromoney, Institutional...

Environmental sustainability indices, such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes and the Ethibel Sustainability Index, quantify the development and promotion of sustainable social, ethical and environmental values in the community. Moreover, such indices provide a benchmark for managing...

There exist several important benchmark indexes in environmental finance, some computed by well-known financial index providers such as the Dow Jones group and others by independent agencies specializing in environmentally and socially responsible investing in finance. The construction of these...

Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations (ACDC) are critical to the global temperature control system and climate change, with ACDC levels having increased rapidly since the start of the industrial revolution in the late 1700s, and the climate having become quite unstable with significant...

The country risk literature argues that country risk ratings have a direct impact on the cost of borrowings as they reflect the probability of debt default by a country. An improvement in country risk ratings, or country creditworthiness, will lower a country's cost of borrowing and debt...