Impact of early COVID-19 pandemic on the US and European stock markets and volatility forecasting

This study examines the impact of early COVID-19 pandemic on U.S. and European stock indices, implied volatility (IV) indices, and forecasting accuracy of IV indices from daily data of January 2012 to December 2020, using an out-of-sample assessment of COVID19. Our results show that COVID-19 death and recovery cases have had a significant positive impact on S&P 500, DJIA and NASDAQ 100. On the other hand, VIX, VXD and VXN show a negative association. Again, we also observe the significant impact of COVID-19 on stock trading prices and volatility expectations. Furthermore, the evidence of the point forecasts is more reliable for European IV indices than for U.S. IV indices. Finally, this study validates the informational efficiency of IV indices on the financial markets and has implications for investors regarding portfolio management and investment risk minimisation in similar future pandemic situations

Consumption-Based CO2 Emissions on Sustainable Development Goals of SAARC Region

Consumption-based CO2 emission (CBE) accounting shows the possibility of global carbon leakage. Very little attention has been paid to the amount of emissions related to the consumption of products and services and their impact on sustainable development goals (SDGs), especially in the SAARC region. This study used a CBE accounting method to measure the CO2 emissions of five major SAARC member countries. Additionally, a Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) and a causality model were used to investigate the long-term effects of the CBE and SDG variables between 1972 and 2015. The results showed that household consumption contributed more than 62.39% of CO2 emissions overall in the SAARC region. India had the highest household emissions, up to 37.27%, and Nepal contributed the lowest, up to 0.61%. The total imported emissions were the greatest in India (16.88 Gt CO2) and Bangladesh (15.90 Gt CO2). At the same time, the results for the long-term relationships between the CBEs and SDGs of the SAARC region showed that only the combustible renewables and waste (CRW) variable is significant for most of these countries. The sharing of the responsibility for emissions between suppliers and customers could encourage governments and policymakers to make global climate policy and sustainable development decisions,which are currently stalled by questions over geographical and past emission inequities

Appreciate the impact of relevant costing for decision making in Ready-Made Garments (RMG) industry of Bangladesh

Relevant costing is a management accounting term that relates to focusing on only the costs relevant to a specific decision being made. It simplifies the decision-making process as it ignores cost data that is irrelevant, or will not have an impact on the specific decision being made. This study adopts an observation of quantitative methodology with primary and secondary data in view of the nature of the analysis. Relevant costing is often used in short-terFm decision making and a number of specific practical examples are illustrated in this study. This study has been designed to achieve the objective of assessing the level of perceptions of four areas such as (i)making & buying, (ii) dropping or retaining a segment, (iii) constrained resources and (iv) special orders in using relevant costing in Ready-made Garments Industry (RMG) of Bangladesh. To attain this objective total 100 sample respondent company from Ready-made Garments Industry (RMG) have been randomly selected. By using variance analysis, authors have found that all four factors have significant influence in using relevant costing. Last, the result of this study suggests that the strengthening the decision-making mechanism required a strong relevant costing benefits and its proper application