Prevention of Financial Risk, the International Conference on Preventing Major Finance Risk and Fostering High-Quality Growth Special Issue

The International Conference on Preventing Major Finance Risk and Fostering High-quality Growth was held on 10–December 11, 2021. Both on-site and virtual conference were organized by Guangdong University of Finance and Economics (GUFE), China. The conference attracted 58 submissions, and further 24 submissions were from a general Call-for-Papers. Finally, only 17 quality articles are composited into the special issue, which means the vigorous review process rejected most of the submission and the acceptance rate of the special issue is 20.7%. The special issue theme is motivated from the global turmoil of financial markets since 2020. A number of unprecedented risks have emerged since then. Articles in the special issue can be, loosely speaking, categorized into three sub-themes. The first sub-theme is conventional financial risks. Wang et al. construct a series of digital economy indexes and explore the impact of financial risk on the development of the global digital economy based on panel data of 121 countries in the period of 2003–2019. They find that increase in financial risk impedes the development of global digital economy and this effect is pronounced in high-income, upper-middle and lower-middle-income countries. In addition, financial risk has significant impact in the period of 2009 to 2019. Guo, Wang, and Fan use the model-free implied volatility and risk-neutral skewness to test the information content of options. Using the CSI 300 ETF options traded on the Hong Kong Exchange, New York Stock Exchange, and Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE), the authors find that information content indeed matters and differs before and after the listing of the options on the SSE; forecasting power improved in relation to return, volatility, and tail risk predictions. Wu et al. investigate how the country risk (i.e. economic/financial risk and political risk) and geopolitical risk influence income inequality of 19 emerging economies in the period of 1985 to 2020. The results show that all the risk measures are positively related to the income equality. Chen et al. use data from the World Uncertainty, the World Trade Uncertainty, and the World Pandemic Uncertainty indices for 142 countries, and propose three new indicators for measuring Turkey’s export markets’ uncertainty from 1996Q1 to 2021Q3. They find that all uncertainty indicators are negatively related to economic growth. Specifically, an increase in export destinations’ uncertainty leads to a slower growth rate of two quarters. Pandemic-induced uncertainty also negatively affects economic growth. Chang, Yen, and Luo investigate how corporate tax avoidance is affected by the future time reference in the country’s official language, using data from 42 countries in the period of 1989– 2020, and document that firms from countries whose language does not grammatically distinguish between future and present tense engage in more tax avoidance activity, reflected by lower cash effective tax rates. Further, the relationship is modified by the country’s formal institutions, i.e. the adoption of IRFS and legal environment. Using the World Business Environment Survey (WEBS) database, Wang et al. show that formal financing constraint hampers firm growth. This article document that, compared with larger EMERGING MARKETS FINANCE AND TRADE 2022, VOL. 58, NO. 15, 4191–4194 https://doi.org/10.1080/1540496X.2022.2151898