Presently, any development initiatives without considering sustainability can barely be imagined. There has been a paradigm shift in the focus of the development partners from the mere development to sustainable development. However, the role of development partners in bringing sustainability in livelihood assets of the rural community has long been questioned. Hence, this study aims to explore the sustainability in the form of changes in livelihood assets of a local community in Bangladesh. This study considers the changes in livelihood assets of the community over the three-time frames - before, during, and after a project implemented by a national NGO called ‘UST’ and subsequently identifies the community’s capacity to sustain the project outcomes after the completion of the project. ‘Sustainable Livelihood Framework (SLF)’ developed by Department for International Development (DFID) was utilized in this study to analyse the vulnerability and livelihood issues of the community members. Data has been collected through focus group discussions, household survey and key informants’ interviews from three distinct villages of ‘Khutamara’ union in the ‘Nilphamari’ district of Bangladesh. The finding of the study states that all the livelihood assets such as the social capital, human capital, natural capital, financial capital, physical capital have positively changed due to the interference of the development partners. This study further finds that even after the completion of project tenure, such positive trends continue to exist among the community members indicating sustainable development. Moreover, political capital- a new type of livelihood has also emerged because of the project implementation which was not quite evident before the inception of the project. In addition, this study explored the unique phenomenon of the Shabolombee Gram, where the transformation altering farmers’, livelihoods does not come from the government or the private sector but originates from a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). Therefore, the government and its development partners may adopt and incorporate the Modified Sustainable Livelihood Framework (MSLF) to ensure the sustainable development.

The study investigates the impact of corporate gender diversity on dividend payouts in Asia-Pacific countries. The study used the data of 610 listed firms in the Asian Pacific region over eleven years, from 2006 to 2016, with 6710 observations. The regression results revealed that the representation of women on board and at least 30% on board positively relates to dividend payout. Board size and board independence have a significant negative relationship with dividend payouts. Overall, results suggest that gender diversity on corporate boards has a greater propensity to pay dividends in the mix of ownership structure, strong and weak corporate governance compliance, and horizontal agency conflict.

The United States, Mexico, and Canada (USMCA) seek to promote fair wages and adequate working conditions, especially in Mexico, by strengthening labor rights and freedom of association. The objective of this research is to determine the factors that influence salary levels in the Mexican Automotive Industry (MAI), through a causality analysis in the Granger sense, to generate a panorama that allows a decision-making process in the Mexican salary policy. With data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, the Bank of Mexico and Statista, autoregressive vector models were estimated to determine causalities in the Granger sense. It was proven that minimum wage, employed personnel, production, total sales, and exports are some causes of remuneration in the sector, with the minimum wage being the most significant. The above suggests that the salary increase involves several actors, such as the government (minimum wage), the organization (production, sales and exports) and the market (employed personnel), therefore, the design of appropriate labor policies will contribute to the dignification of salaries inside the MAI.

In this paper, we explore the static and dynamic effects of oil rent on competitiveness in Saudi Arabia’s economy during the period 1970–2022. In addition, we examined the short-run, strong and long-run relationships between exports and industry, inflation, energy use (oil rents) and agriculture using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach developed. The analysis showed that government spending will contribute to enhancing the competitive environment with a difference of one year. Moreover, the industry will contribute to increasing competitiveness for a positive relationship in the long term. The results stated that there is an insignificant relationship between competitiveness, inflation, and oil rents. The analysis also shows that inflation has a negative impact with statistical significance in the short term. In addition, the error correction model (ECM) coefficient is negative and has statistical significance at 0.76 at a 1% significant level, which indicates the existence of an error correction mechanism and thus the existence of a long-term relationship between the variables.

Peru is a country open to the world economy and to national and foreign investments; therefore, economic activities of an industrial, commercial and service nature in general are developed. It also has a wide variety of natural resources, which is why the state has chosen to apply differentiated treatment in the tax field to certain types of business activities by granting certain “benefits” and “incentives”. However, due to a lack of knowledge about tax legislation, they are not used adequately. In this context, the objective was to analyze the level of knowledge of the legislation, tax and its impact on the development of their operations in formal business aquaculture in the ring circumlacustrine of the region in 2021. It was developed under a descriptive correlational design with a sample of 80 circumlacustrine ring aquaculture companies. The results indicated that there is a low level of knowledge about tax legislation on the part of the owners of aquaculture companies, which negatively affects the development of their formal operations in the circumlacustrine ring of the Puno region. As a consequence, it has a negative impact on the formalization of companies since they do not know about the benefits and tax incentives and even less about the tax regimes to which they are subject as taxpayers; therefore, aquaculture companies are in the informality category in a high percentage.

The economy of Pakistan has faced many challenges due to COVID-19, leading to numerous systemic failures and leaving it struggling to recover. This research aims to shed light on the specific challenges faced by Pakistani textile companies during the pandemic. Comprehensive data was collected from one hundred fifty-three textile managers in Pakistan. Upon examining the impact of COVID-19 on businesses, it has been found that the most pressing issues revolved around working capital and strategies for generating new sales. Interestingly, many of these businesses were well-prepared in the digital realm, readily embracing digital knowledge and seizing opportunities by pivoting to the production of personal protective equipment (PPE) and N95 masks. This study aims to evaluate the early consequences of COVID-19 on Pakistan’s textile industry. Considering the scarcity of research on these challenges and opportunities, our work contributes to a better understanding of the hurdles the textile sector faces. Furthermore, it sets the groundwork for future research in this domain. It provides valuable insights for textile businesses, enabling them to align their strategies with the ever-evolving digital marketing landscape.