Preface – by Chrysovalantis Gaganis, Fotios Pasiouras, Menelaos Tasiou, Constantin Zopounidis -- Chapter 1 – The changing role of banks in the financial system: social versus conventional banks, by Simon Cornée, Anastasia Cozarenco, Ariane Szafarz -- Chapter2 – ESG issues as strategic...

This study investigates whether the capital market values the efficiency of firms. After tracing stock returns and efficiency changes of 399 listed insurance firms in 52 countries during the 2002-2008 period, the paper reports a positive and statistically significant relationship between profit...

We link genetic diversity in the country of origin of the firms' board members with corporate performance via board members' nationality. We hypothesize that our approach captures deep-rooted differences in cultural, institutional, social, psychological, physiological, and other traits that...

This paper investigates the role of technical reserves in the income smoothing behavior of insurance companies. This is one of the first attempts in the literature to trace such relationship in the insurance industry, especially at a multi-country setting. The experience of 770 insurance firms...