This research focuses and examines the association among profitability of banks, along with bank specific and macroeconomic factors of Pakistan. With the help of financial data of thirty-two Pakistani banks over the period of 2011-2015. Pooled OLS (POLS)/Random Effect, Breusch and Pagan Lagrangian Multiplier Test for Random Effects estimations and Hausman Test for Fixed vs Random effects estimations used for further empirical analysis and interpretations. Further to explore the relationship of profitability indicator ROA along with Earning per Share (EPS), SIZE, Cash Equivalents, Spread Ratio and Capital Ratio as bank specific (banking/microeconomic indicators), while on the other hand Inflation, Interest Rate and GDP as external macroeconomic factors. Statistical results to this study established confirmation that EPS, SIZE, Capital Ratio and GDP have a significant impact on the ROA of banking sector in Pakistan. The calculated results of the study are of worthy to mutually academics and banking financial policy makers.

This article develops a dynamic panel model to examine the association among coronavirus outbreak, investor attention, social isolation, investor sentiments and stock returns in the German Stock exchange. The results of the two-step GMM estimator show a significant effect of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange after controlling for calendar anomalies, meteorological conditions, country-specific factors and oil returns. Results also show that a higher level of stock returns during social isolation (lockdown period) is explained by investor attention to buy underpriced stocks. Thus, temporary social isolation enhances an investor’s ability to make better investment decisions. Investor sentiment indicators (momentum and liquidity) are also positively associated with the stock return and partially mediate the COVID-returns link, but they have no direct effect on investor attention. The stock market attracts investor attention under good news shocks (recovered cases) when investor sentiments are optimistic. Our results are robust across the transparency level of firms and their size.

Employer engagement, in existing literature, mostly refers to the engagement of the educational institutions in the corporate world; to benchmark their curricula and syllabi in-line with the employers' needs. This study has focused on the same construct with different relation; typically in the context of work-based learning providers and organizational practices. Although there has been theoretical discussions and calls to develop comprehensive measures for employer engagement, however, no contemporary measure for employer engagement exist to the context this study was carried out. The scope of this study covers the development of a new scale based on the guidelines to measure employer engagement specifically to the context of work based practices. The scale constitutes of 19 items that address, employer engagement based on 3 sub-dimensions. The scale was developed and validated through six phases beginning with the determination of valid dimensions / construct followed by generation of pool of items, assessing the content adequacy of the items and items refinement through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Reliability and validity of the scale are also tested.

We empirically investigate the impact of liquidity framework proposed under Basel III, namely Net Stable Funding Ratio on Net Interest Margin for 385 banks in SAARC countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka) along with five developed countries i.e. Australia, Canada, China, Japan and United State over 2003-2013. The NSFR in Basel III liquidity necessity intended to limit funding risk emerging from maturity conflicts between assets and liabilities of overall countries. The results indicate that there is also a gap between developing and developed countries to managing the stability of their funding source as well as liquidity of its assets is a benefit to them and is also transformed into net interest margin by comparison of developing and developed countries. In addition, this study also proved the findings of previous researches in developed countries that are relevant to bank determinants and net interest margin in the world.

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