There must be a better match between the supply of financial news graduates in colleges and the media's demand for financial news talents. Based on 300 questionnaires and in-depth interviews from three universities, namely Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, and Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, this paper uses the interview method to excavate the professional quality improvement path for majoring in financial news students. Results reveal that undergraduates majoring in financial news have problems such as low professional identity, insufficient recognition of the discipline system, poor sense of professional identity, common matching between job selection and majors, and worrying about the status quo of professional literacy. Therefore, the improvement of the professional quality of students majoring in financial news and the reform of the training program needs to drive the professional quality of students in multiple dimensions, change their professional cognitive problems, strengthen their professional identity, and achieve an effective match between supply and demand of financial media professionals.

The rise of privately issued digital currencies, which primarily serve as alternative investment assets poses a challenge to the traditional financial instruments traded in the financial market. This study examines the dynamic relationship between the major privately issued digital currency (Bitcoin) and two financial market securities in Nigeria. The paper employed Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model and presents three relevant findings. First, the impulse response function indicates the absence of a significant response of the Nigerian financial market to shocks emanating from the Bitcoin market, implying lower connectedness between the two markets. Secondly, the outcome of the variance decomposition reveals a lower contribution of Bitcoin to changes in stock prices and treasury bills, however, stock prices and treasury bills contributed higher impact to each other compared to the contribution of Bitcoin. Thirdly, a weak bi-directional causality between the Bitcoin and treasury bills was observed and a uni-directional causality running from treasury bills and stocks, implying the existence of portfolio rebalancing from the fixed income to the equities market. Despite the weak connection between digital currency and the financial market, the paper recommends that the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Securities and Exchange Commission should maintain monitoring the development of crypto exchanges and continue reviewing the existing policy restricting cryptocurrency transactions through banks to avoid its unsavoury effects.

By introducing time to build, which creates a time-lag between government investment and the accumulation of productive capital, into an analysis of fiscal stimulus to the economy with financial frictions, we find that the effectiveness of fiscal policy is dampened. While the weakening effects of time to build become significantly weaker alongside with a higher fraction of government bonds allocated to leverage-constrained banks, which can be explained by a high correlation between time to build and financial frictions in both worsening balance sheet conditions of banks. Furthermore, the stimulus effects of public investment become stronger associated with shorter time-to-build period.

Liquidity and its associated issues are one of dominant strands in the market microstructure. In this study, microblogging-based behavioral perspective on economic unrest is linked to the market liquidity. The concept of liquidity is examined in terms of price dispersion relative to the quantity traded. The analysis contains the quantification of multiple linear regression, Gaussian distribution technique, and vector error correction methodology. In the economic stability period, the investor’s mood, either in positive manner or pessimistic context, had an influential role on the price impact volume-based liquidity. Meantime, the probability was higher for occurrence of price impact volume-based liquidity in response to the sentiment indicators. In the economic unrest environments, the positive bias investor’s mood was not vigorous enough to influence the dispersion of asset’s prices and trading quantity. Most importantly, the negative bias investor’s emotion was linked to increase the dispersion of asset’s prices relative to the quantity traded. Investors with a lower amount of trading quantity had declined the liquidity in the market. Additionally, there was a higher probability for occurrence of illiquidity in the pessimistic market periods. However, changes in past sentiment series were not associated with changes in pervious liquidity series, either in short run or long run. The findings may be potentially applicable to manage the behavioral perspective of liquidity risk.

Current societal challenges related to retirement planning, healthcare systems’ evolution and environmental changes require households to pay a closer attention to their personal finances. This in turns calls for the associated industry to transform and scale. To do so, the personal finance industry could potentially leverage artificial intelligence tools for which there has been increasing levels of chatter. However, there is, to my knowledge, little consensus on whether or not those tools are appropriate given the challenges ahead. The literature review at the heart of this article first suggests that the stream of personal finance where transformation is more than needed is the one pertaining to investments, rather than the ones associated to loans, insurances or payments. Second, the productivity levers fueling the transformation of this branch are yet more driven, as of today, by simple digitalization notions rather by the usage of A.I. instruments. Over the next couple of years, more attention should thus be paid to use/business cases associated to investment products and the digitalization of their distribution chain.

This study investigates the impact of COVID-19 on bank borrowers across 22 Arab economies from 2017 to 2022, employing the two-step system GMM estimator. The findings reveal a significant negative effect of COVID-19 on the number of bank borrowers, highlighting a sharp decline in borrowing activity due to the pandemic’s economic disruptions. Notably, the decline was more pronounced in non-GCC countries, where economic structures and pandemic responses differed. Robustness tests, including subsample analysis and alternative econometric models (pooled OLS, fixed effects, random effects, and 2SLS), consistently confirm these results. The study emphasizes the need for targeted policy interventions to stabilize financial systems, reduce borrowing costs, and control exchange rate fluctuations to maintain credit access during crises. The findings provide crucial insights for policymakers aiming to support economic recovery and strengthen the resilience of the banking sector in the face of future external shocks.

Banks operating within a free economic environment and with constructive regulatory frameworks can function with enhanced efficiency, augmenting their profitability. This study aimed to examine the influence of economic freedom and financial restrictions on banks' profitability within the Organization of Islamic Cooperation member nations. The study used a sample of 1453 banks, collecting panel data spanning 13 years. The System-GMM methodology was justified based on the enduring characteristics of the data and the profitability metrics. The dependent variables, namely the Net Income Margin, Return on Average Assets, and Return on Average Equity were individually examined. The research findings indicate that most economic freedom indicators, except for investment freedom, harm bank profitability. The influence of the rule of law on profitability indicators is mostly adverse, although regulatory quality within the financial system has a comparatively favorable effect on profitability. Furthermore, bank-specific performance indicators had a negative impact on profitability, except for bank size. Moreover, country-specific variables substantially impact banks' profitability, including inflation, tax, and interest rates. The presence of Islamic banking has been shown to substantially impact the profitability performance of banks within the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. OIC banks' profitability is adversely impacted by the ongoing health crises, including the Covid-19 pandemic.

Major economic and financial contractions usually go hand-in-hand with muted inflation. This has been true for the Great Depression, the Global Financial Crisis, as well as the Covid-19 crisis. In this paper, we theoretically highlight and discuss the evolution of instruments and approaches monetary-policy decision makers at the Federal Reserve have in lifting inflation to desired levels in times of the zero-lower bound, paying particular focus on more rigorous developments like asymmetric average inflation and temporary price-level targeting.

Excessive volatility in financial markets can disrupt economic activity, affect investor and consumer confidence, and potentially lead to financial crises in an economy. Due to this backdrop, this study examined the link between asset class volatility and the output gap in Nigeria. The asset classes were categorized into stock, crude, gold, and bitcoin. The study adopted the GARCH and Bayesian VAR approach and found that all share index has an initial negative impulse with output gap while other asset classes have a positive impulse on output gap. The outcome of this study revealed to both policymakers and economists the potential risks and vulnerabilities of asset class volatility in the economy. Based on this result, recommendations are made amongst which is the strengthening of the Nigerian stock market to help with the inflationary pressures this is because the Nigerian stock market hurt the output gap also, the government should prioritize investing in crude, gold, and bitcoin to push the actual output to full capacity, which brings about employment.

Gold has been traditionally well recognized as a safe heaven for financial markets. Lately, Bitcoin has been gradually considered as a popular alternative. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020, it has become even more necessary and critical to examine the diversification capability of them to hedge financial risks associated with an unexpected crisis comparable to the pandemic. This paper hence employs the wavelet analysis, complemented by the multivariate DCC-GARCH approach, to measure the coherence of the gold and Bitcoin prices with six representative stock market indices, three for developed economies and three for emerging economies, all of which are heavily affected by the pandemic. To have a more balanced and comprehensive analysis, two-year data are used, spanning from 12th April 2019 to 15th April 2021, which covers approximately one year before and one year after the announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results suggest that the returns of both gold and Bitcoin are generally not strongly correlated with the market returns of all six indices, particularly for short-term investment horizons. That is, investors in all six indices can benefit through gold, as well as Bitcoin, in terms of hedging. Meanwhile, compared with Bitcoin, gold shows to be less correlated with the indices, particularly for long-term investment horizons. The findings hence suggest that gold and Bitcoin offer diversification benefits to investors in the market indices during a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for short-term investment horizons. The study also reminds policymakers thinking beyond the pandemic about the future of the earth, including air pollution and health, for sustainable development of the whole world.

The paper examines how the growth of entrepreneurship affects the generation of employment opportunities in Nasarawa State. Even though entrepreneurship is crucial for generating employment, there are still obstacles in the way of its growth. These include limited support from governmental and non-governmental organizations, difficulty obtaining financing and microcredit, proper training and enlightenment etc. The objective of this paper is to investigate how the growth of entrepreneurship affects the creation of jobs in Lafia, Nasarawa State. The study used a descriptive research design, and the means used for gathering data was a questionnaire given to new entrepreneurs in Lafia, Nasarawa State. A sample size of 375 was determined from a population of 1604 using a Smith (1984) sampling formula; this sample represented the number of questionnaires that were delivered. This findings of the research demonstrated that the creation of jobs in Nasarawa State is significantly impacted by the growth of entrepreneurship. This implies that through entrepreneurship development, self-reliance and employment opportunities have been created in Lafia, Nasarawa State. Through this, youths have been able to develop a way to create value in the society. More so, this study revealed that access to credit (micro credit) has a significant effect on employment creation in the State. Having acquired knowledge on how to manage finance they make sound financial decisions. Lastly, the study showed that the number of new businesses established has a significant effect on employment creation in Nasarawa State. This result implies that youths who apply their entrepreneurship skills and creativity in one nature of business or the other have been able to earn a living out of it in Nasarawa State. This paper thus suggests that the Nasarawa State government should genuinely recognize the relevance of entrepreneurship development and provide an enabling environment. Both the government and institutions should ensure that youths get adequate financial credit (micro-credit).