This paper investigates the efficiency and total factor productivity (TFP) growth of the Pakistani banking industry and determines the impact of risk and competition on the efficiency and TFP growth. The data envelopment analysis (DEA)–based Malmquist productivity index is used to measure efficiency and TFP growth of the Pakistani banking industry. The generalized method of moments (GMM) model is applied to observe the impact of risk and competition on efficiency and TFP growth. The motivation behind the use of GMM model is its ability to overcome unobserved heterogeneity, autocorrelation, and endogeneity issues. The results of the study show that the credit and liquidity risks have positive while insolvency risk has negative effect on the efficiency and TFP growth. The competition leads to improve technological efficiency but declines the technical efficiency growth. Among other explanatory variables, operational cost management, banking sector development, GDP growth rate, and infrastructure development show significant relationships with various efficiencies and TFP growth. The banks also facilitate for the purchase of carbon-intensive products in order to reduce carbon emissions. Strong banking development successfully allocate their financial resources for the development of energy-efficient technology while banking sector development is found to be negatively related with environmental sustainability. The strong banking sector possesses a significant negative influence on carbon reduction and environmental degradation.

“How does a firm’s bankruptcy affect its regional environment?” is an open empirical question that has received little attention in the literature. We hypothesize that because enterprises provide funds to protect their regional environment, their default risk negatively impacts that environment. We analyze the impact of corporate default risk on environmental deterioration in the international setting to answer this question. Using a firm-level corporate default risk quarterly data from 2013q1 to 2020q4, we find that corporate default risk is positively associated with CO2 emissions and decomposed components. These findings are reliable in low-income and highly uncertain countries but weak in countries having more market competition. We also find that the negative impact of corporate default risk on the environment is more robust in countries with more population density and fewer forest area thresholds. Finally, using the instrumental variable approach, we provide preliminary evidence that firm-level political risk (for US and Canadian firms only) increases corporate default risk, leading to a degrading environment. Our findings are robust to alternative measurements of a firm’s default risk and environmental deterioration. Our research will help environmental authorities to consider corporate default risk as a determinant when formulating environmental-related strategies.

China Tarim River Basin is located in an arid area, whose rapid socioeconomic development intensifies the current water resources shortage. To allocate water resources reasonably, this paper introduces the bankruptcy theory into the cooperative game model to contract a linear function describing the degree of satisfaction of each region’s declared water demand. Bankruptcy theory solves the problem of insufficient information about stakeholders in the cooperative game. From the perspective of the cooperative game’s stability, the bankruptcy allocation stability index (BASI) is used to evaluate and compare water resource allocation results in the Tarim River Basin in 2025 and 2030 under different scenarios. Moreover, this paper uses the improved TOPSIS model to build the harmony index of water-economy-environment (HWEE) to evaluate the harmony of water resources, economy, and environment in each region. The results show that the model is more suitable for the actual water allocation game and has a good application value than the classical bankruptcy theory. Moreover, the stability index and HWEE proposed in this paper also have better applicability, and the allocation scheme with the same game weight in each region is more stable.

This paper investigates the impact of several comprehensive risks such as credit risk, capital risk, liquidity risk, and insolvency risks on Pakistani banks’ technical efficiency to assess the nexus between environmental investments with technical efficiency of banks. It also probes into the effect of competition among the Pakistani banks on technical efficiency. The data envelopment analysis (DEA) CCR and BCC models are used to estimate technical, purely technical, and scale efficiencies of the Pakistani banks. The Lerner index measures the banking competition. For estimation, the bootstrap truncated regression is used as an econometric technique. The robustness of results is cross-checked by using an alternative econometric technique (fractional logit regression) and an alternative competition measure (Boone indicator). The study revealed that capital risk has a positive impact on scale efficiency and insolvency risk has a negative impact on technical and pure technical efficiencies. Similarly, there is a positive significant relationship between technical efficiency and environmental investment. Furthermore, the competition has a significant negative effect on Pakistani banks’ technical and pure technical efficiencies. The results suggest that the efficiency of the Pakistani banks is significantly affected by bank size, taxation, diversification, operational cost management, banking development, trade openness, and infrastructure development, which ultimately promotes environmental efficiency and protection. The comparative study indicates that the state-owned banks have higher technical, pure technical, and scale efficiencies than the private, foreign, and Islamic banks.