Beschreibung:
The energy sector in Vietnam has been developed rapidly as the country is transitioning to renewable energy. Moreover, the Vietnamese government also motivates the engagement of private investors in the energy sector to enhance the competitiveness of the energy market. Therefore, this paper investigates how innovation investment and ownership concentration affect the financial sustainability of 103 energy companies in Vietnam from January 2007 to December 2020. We employ the Fixed Effect Model and Generalized Method of Moments estimations to analyze a sample of 600 firm-year observations. The empirical findings show that innovations and block-holders support firms to grow sustainably. The positive relationship between innovation investment and financial sustainability is robust even when we employ alternative proxies of innovation investment. Our study indicates that block-ownership affects sustainable developments of smaller energy firms, while innovation investment significantly improves the sustainability of larger energy firms. Finally, our study reports that the Covid 19 pandemic adversely affects the financial sustainability of energy firms. Our findings recommend that energy firms increase innovation investments such as training and R&D activities to grow sustainably. In addition, the Vietnamese government should encourage small energy firms to attract block-holders to improve financial sustainability. Our findings align with agency theory, resource-based theory, and prior literature