PhD candidate researching how digital technology changes financial reporting

• ITPDMarket volatility under trade policy uncertainty: GARCH evidence from Trump's 2025 tariff announcementsInternational Trade, Politics and Development, 1-17, 2026

  Zaid Tahat, Ahmad Alomari, Fawwaz Alrwabdah

  Purpose This study examines how multilateral trade policy uncertainty (TPU), i.e. simultaneous tariff threats against several trading partners, affects US stock market volatility. Unlike prior work on bilateral disputes, it focuses on the compound uncertainty created by the April 2025 tariff announcements under former President Trump and on how responses vary across sectors with different global trade exposures. Design/methodology/approach Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) and Exponential Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (EGARCH) models are estimated on daily returns for the S&P 500 and three sectoral indices (technology XLK, industrials XLI, utilities XLU) from January to April 2025. Tariff-announcement dummies capture policy shocks, ANOVA tests compare volatility persistence across sectors and models are estimated by quasi-maximum likelihood with robust standard errors. Findings Tariff announcements raised volatility sharply: S&P 500 conditional volatility doubled from 0.8% to 1.6% within five days, with a 23-day half-life. Responses were heterogeneous, with persistence of 0.96 and 0.93 for technology and industrials versus 0.72 for utilities, and ANOVA rejected equality across sectors. EGARCH results show asymmetry: negative shocks raise volatility by 0.14%, while equivalent positive shocks reduce it by only 0.06%, consistent with the leverage effect and loss aversion. Practical implications During trade disputes, investors should rebalance toward domestic-oriented sectors, while policymakers should favor gradual and clear communication of trade measures to limit adverse market effects, especially in globally integrated sectors. Originality/value The paper offers early evidence on multilateral TPU and a framework for its transmission, showing that simultaneous, multipartner tariff threats generate compound uncertainty and volatility persistence beyond those documented for bilateral trade disputes.

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• DJBLinking Green Banking Practices to Customer Advocacy: Examining the Mediating Effect of Environmental Concern and the Moderating Influence of Corporate Image in the Jordanian Banking SectorDibon Journal of Business, 2(3), 514-531, 2026

  Fawwaz Alrwabdah, Ahmad Alomari

  This study examines how customers' perceptions of green banking practices shape their advocacy behaviour towards their banks, and whether environmental concern mediates and corporate image moderates this relationship. Drawing on signaling theory, the study frames green banking initiatives as credible signals that influence customer attitudes and behaviour. Survey data were collected from 705 bank customers in Jordan and analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling with 5,000 bootstrap samples. The results show that perceived green banking practices significantly increase customer advocacy, both directly and indirectly through heightened environmental concern, which emerges as the strongest driver of advocacy. Corporate image strengthens the link between environmental concern and advocacy but weakens the direct effect of green banking practices on advocacy, suggesting diminishing returns for high-prestige banks whose green signals are treated as expected rather than distinctive. The findings extend signaling theory to the green banking context and offer guidance for managers seeking to convert sustainability initiatives into customer advocacy, sustainable growth, and competitive advantage in the financial sector.

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• SusThe Effect of ESG Controversies on Corporate Financial Performance: Evidence from US Listed FirmsSustainability, 18(19), 9901, 2026

  Areen Zuhier Altaany, Ahmad Alomari

  This study examines the association between environmental, social and governance (ESG) controversies and the subsequent financial performance of firms listed in the United States and whether the information environment of the firm conditions this association. Most of the literature measures the sustainability conduct of the firm through its own disclosure and the ratings built from that disclosure, while negative events recorded by external media sources have received less attention. Using a panel of 14,210 firm-year observations for 1737 NASDAQ and NYSE firms over 2014 to 2025 from the LSEG Refinitiv database and a two-way fixed effects model with standard errors clustered by firm, the study finds that a firm that recorded an ESG controversy in the previous year reports a return on assets lower by about 0.50 percentage points and a lower Tobin’s Q relative to the same firm in years without a controversy. The return on assets result is the more consistent of the two across the alternative specifications, while the Tobin’s Q result is supportive but more sensitive to the specification and to the composition of the sample. The pre-event lead coefficient is not significant at the 5 percent level for the return on assets, and analyst coverage does not respond to a controversy, which speaks against a simple reverse-causality reading. The evidence is consistent with heterogeneity in the association with the return on assets, which is concentrated among firms followed by few financial analysts and is not detected among firms in the highest tercile of analyst coverage, whereas no such heterogeneity is found for Tobin’s Q. The results are robust to sector-by-year fixed effects, to the exclusion of the pandemic years, to lagged controls, and to alternative treatment definitions, and they are reported in full together with the specifications in which the estimates lose precision. The principal limitation is that a fixed effects design with observational data documents within-firm associations and cannot by itself establish causal effects.

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• FBThe role of investor trust in mediating the impact of perceived blockchain integration on perceived stock market efficiency: evidence from the amman stock exchangeFrontiers in Blockchain, 9, 1844368, 2026

  Zaid Tahat, Ahmad Alomari, Ibrahim Al-Radaideh, Adham Taher Alessa, Anwar Al-Gasaymeh, Diana Alhajjeah, Samah Ibrahim Jarbou

  This study examines the mediating role of investor trust in the relationship between perceived blockchain integration and perceived stock market efficiency within the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE). The Amman Stock Exchange (ASE), established in 1999, is the sole securities exchange in Jordan and one of the leading emerging markets in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Drawing on technology acceptance theory, trust theory, and market efficiency theory, the research develops and tests a dual-pathway model wherein perceived blockchain integration relates to perceived market efficiency both directly and indirectly through investor trust. Using structural equation modeling with data collected from 400 market participants, the findings reveal that perceived blockchain integration is significantly and positively associated with investor trust (β = 0.849, p < 0.001) and with perceived stock market efficiency (β = 0.448, p < 0.001). Importantly, investor trust partially mediates this relationship (β = 0.380, p < 0.001), confirming the dual-pathway impact. Among blockchain dimensions, security demonstrates the strongest effect on both investor trust and market efficiency. The study contributes to the emerging literature on blockchain in financial markets by empirically validating the psychological mechanisms through which technological innovations translate into more favorable perceptions of market functioning. For market regulators and exchange administrators, the findings suggest that comprehensive blockchain implementation strategies should address both technological deployment and trust-building initiatives to strengthen favorable investor perceptions of market efficiency in emerging markets.

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• JRFMThe Role of Digitization in Corporate Financial Performance: Evidence from GCC BanksJournal of Risk and Financial Management, 19(8), 631, 2026

  Rami Alzoubi, Mayes R. Gharaibeh, Ibrahim Saleh Al-Radaideh, Ahmad Alomari, Saleem Ibrahim Alzoubi, Fawwaz Alrwabdah

  Digitization is reshaping how banks operate, yet whether it improves corporate financial performance remains unsettled. This study examines how the digital transformation that banks disclose relates to the structure of their key financial performance indicators. Using a balanced panel of 73 listed Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) banks over 2020–2025 (438 bank–year observations), digital transformation is measured by a text-mined digital disclosure index (DDI, 0–100) constructed from annual reports and decomposed into nine themes. Bank fixed-effects regressions with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors, one-year-lagged specifications, and two-step system GMM are estimated across profitability, net interest margin, cost efficiency, credit risk and capital adequacy. Disclosed digitization more than doubled over the window, but its associations with performance are conditional rather than uniformly positive. Within banks, a higher DDI value is associated with wider net interest margins, yet also with lower profitability, higher cost-to-income ratios, modestly higher credit risk, and thinner capital buffers. This pattern is consistent with an investment or build-out phase in which the costs of digital transformation are visible before any efficiency or stability dividend and in which margins are the single offsetting benefit. The six-year window observes only this cost-bearing segment and not any later recovery, so the study documents the investment-phase drag rather than a completed cycle. The theme decomposition indicates that the margin association is closest to regulatory technology, cybersecurity, broad transformation and payments. Because the design is observational, the results are interpreted as within-bank associations rather than causal effects, and, although precisely estimated, these associations are economically modest. The study contributes a transparent theme-decomposed measure of bank digitization and evidence on its limits for corporate financial performance in an emerging-market banking region.

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