This paper examines the association between corporate social responsibility and firm financial performance for the period from 2008 to 2011. Corporate social responsibility is of crucial importance for the evaluation of firms financial because corporate social responsibility is the action...

We analyze the choice between a one-tier and a two-tier board structure in a firm with a large shareholder sitting on the board. The board has two tasks: project selection and monitoring the ability of the manager. In a one-tier structure, the sole board performs all tasks. In a two-tier...

Stock option contracts provide managers with dual incentives, motivating both effort and fraud. We show that although there exists an infinity of stock option contracts that induce a given level of effort, no contract behaviorally dominates another in the sense that it induces relatively greater...

This research explores whether management by family members creates or destroys firm value. We estimate the impact of family pervasiveness in top management (family members as executive officers or board members) on firm value as measured by Tobin's Q. Results indicate that family members acting...

This study is an empirical attempt to investigate whether firms' bond issues mitigate rent extraction by their banks. To that end, I focus on the cash holdings of Japanese listed firms in the early 1980s, when Japanese banks used compensation balances as a device to extract rent from their...

This paper studies bank distress in MENA countries and investigates whether mergers are commonly considered as a solution for resolving individual bank distress. Both specific bank levels and macro variables are deployed to predict banking distress. In line with other recent papers, we challenge...

In the corporate governance of banks, bank boards of directors play a significant role by monitoring and advising management in the formulation and implementation of strategies. Our hypothesis is that certain characteristics of bank boards (size, composition and proactiveness) determine the...

This paper investigates the presence of buoyancy effects in VAT revenue. The projected improvement in economic conditions from 2014 onwards could result in cumulative gains in VAT revenue up to 0.70% of GDP in the period from 2014 to 2016. There is evidence that the intensification of VAT...

We contribute to the literature by studying the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) from major net oil importers (USA, Europe and China) on Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) stock markets. We use panel data methods to estimate different specifications. We find that (i) an increase in EPU...

This paper compares the output gap estimates based on a number of different methods. We take advantage of the unique properties of the Mongolian economy in order to evaluate the different approaches. We find that an economic measure derived from a Blanchard and Quah-type joint model of output...