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This study aims to explore the potential impact of country-level governance in corporate financing structures.

A two-step system generalized method of moment was used due to the endogeneity issue. The whole sample comprises 3,761 firms in five economies – China, India, Pakistan, Singapore and South Korea – from 2007 to 2016.

The results indicate that the debt option for financing is not favorable under governments with an adequate governance arrangement. However, there is a direct and significant link between country governance and equity financing because in adequate governance arrangements, the possibilities of information asymmetry are minimal and businesses consider equity a more appropriate and safer financing instrument. In contrast, firms prefer to trade-credit financing in poor governance economies, which confirms an adverse link between trade credit and adequate governance.

The country’s governance should be considered a sensitive matter when deciding about corporate financing.

This arrangement of variables has not been previously analyzed in the literature, suggesting the study’s novelty.

This paper examines whether the adoption of Japan’s Stewardship Code by institutional investors influences their preference for investee companies' governance quality. The Code, introduced by the Financial Services Agency in 2014, promotes constructive engagement between institutional investors and investee companies. Engagement with investees should improve institutional investors' ability to assess governance quality across their portfolios. The paper examines if this results in a positive relationship between the levels of Code-compliant institutional shareholding and investee governance quality.

The association between Code-compliant institutional shareholding levels and a governance quality score is examined for Nikkei 500 companies.

A positive association is observed between shareholdings by Code-compliant institutional investors and investee governance, with board independence playing a key role. Analysis shows that the association between institutional shareholding and governance is stronger for the Code-compliant shareholding than for overall institutional shareholdings. In addition, no significant relationship is found between the levels of shareholding by non-Code-compliant institutional investors and the governance quality score of investee companies. Taken together, the results suggest that Code adoption strengthens institutional investors' preference for high-quality investee governance.

Despite the introduction of stewardship regulation worldwide, there is a scarcity of empirical research that examines its operation. The study contributes to the existing literature by providing insights into how compliance with stewardship regulation influences institutional investor decision-making.

This study compares the motives of holding cash between developed (Australian) and developing (Malaysian) financial markets.

For the period 2006–2020, the t-test, fixed-effect and generalised method of moment (GMM) model have been applied to a sample of 1878 (1,165 Australian and 713 Malaysian) firms.

The empirical results reveal that firms in developed financial markets hold higher cash compared to the developing financial markets. The findings confirm that motives to hold cash differ between developed and developing financial markets. The GMM findings further show that cash holdings (CH) in Australia are higher due to higher ratios of cash flow, research and development (R&D) and return on assets (ROA), and lower due to larger dividend payments. In the Malaysian market, however, cash flows and R&D are ineffectual, ROA falls and dividend payments rise CH.

The study helps managers, practitioners and investors understand that firms' distinct economic, institutional, accounting and financial environments are important. To attain the desired outcomes, they must thus comprehend and consider these considerations while developing suitable liquidity strategies.

To the authors' best knowledge, this is the initial research demonstrating how varied cash motives and their ramifications are in developed and developing financial markets. Therefore, this study identifies the importance that CH motives varied among financial markets and that findings from a particular market cannot be generalised to other markets because of the market and financial structural variations.

This chapter analyzes how the industry environment determines corporate dividend decisions. First, common participants in the product market are competitors, suppliers, and customers. These micro-stakeholders create competitive pressures on firms and thus affect their current and future performance. Competitors influence dividend decisions through three mechanisms, namely predation threat, corporate governance, and imitation. Predation threat reduces firms' incentives to pay dividends when facing high rivalry. Competition helps firms improve corporate governance. However, strong corporate governance may increase or decrease dividend payments since dividend policy may be the outcome of strong corporate governance or the substitute for weak corporate governance, respectively. Besides, firms tend to imitate their industry peers in dividend policy. Second, as a financial policy, dividend policy is also affected by participants in the financial market like investors, creditors, and auditors. These financial stakeholders' behaviors are important to stock prices. Due to the agency problem, creditors have high incentives to restrict firm's dividend payments in order to protect their benefits. On the other hand, creditors are effective external monitors who help firms improve their corporate governance. Outside investors affect corporate dividend policy through their valuation. Firms pay more dividends if investors prefer dividends to capital gains. Auditors play the role of a third-party monitor, and thus, they help firms reduce managers' expropriation of shareholders and improve the quality of accounting information. Furthermore, we also investigate dividend policy of regulated industries in both financial sector (banking, insurance, and real estate) and utilities sector (energy, telecommunications, and transportation).

The authors examine how the major board reforms recently implemented by countries around the world affect firms' choice of debt.

Using a quasi-experimental setting of major board reforms around the world that aim to improve board-related governance practices in various areas, this study investigates the impact of effective board monitoring on corporate debt choice. The authors employ difference-in-differences-type quasi-natural experiment method and path analysis for hypotheses testing.

The authors find that the implementation of board reforms is positively associated with firms' preference for public debt financing over bank debt. However, this effect tends to weaken after the fourth year following the implementation of board reforms. In additional analyses, the authors find that “rule-based” reforms have a more pronounced effect on firms' choice of debt than do “comply-or-explain” reforms. Both (1) strengthened firm-level internal governance practices that address concerns about the agency cost of debt and (2) reduced information asymmetries play important roles in facilitating firms' debt choice, but the evidence suggests that the former is the economic mechanism through which country-level reforms affect corporate debt choice.

The study extends the literature examining the heterogeneity of corporate debt choices in a global setting and the literature on the consequences of corporate governance reforms.

The findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the corporate board reforms implemented in countries around the world, addressing concerns from critics about their potential harm or ineffectiveness.

The results indicate that country-level board reforms reduce the extent to which shareholder–creditor conflicts harm shareholders.

This chapter analyzes how the macro-environment determines corporate dividend decisions. First, political factors including political uncertainty, economic policy uncertainty, political corruption, and democracy may have two opposite effects on dividend decisions. For example, firms learn democratic practices to improve their corporate governance, but dividend policy may be the outcome of strong corporate governance or the substitute for poor corporate governance. Second, firms in countries of high national income, low inflation, and highly developed stock markets tend to pay more dividends. A monetary restriction (expansion) reduces (increases) dividend payments, as economic shocks like financial crises and the COVID-19 may negatively affect corporate dividend policy through higher external financial constraint, economic uncertainty, and agency costs. On the other hand, they may positively influence corporate dividend policy through agency costs of debt, shareholders' bird-in-hand motive, substitution of weak corporate governance, and signaling motive. Third, social factors including national culture, religion, and language affect dividend decisions since they govern both managers' and shareholders' views and behaviors. Fourth, firms tend to reduce their dividends when they face stronger pressure to reduce pollution, produce environment-friendly products, or follow a green policy. Finally, firms have high levels of dividends when shareholders are strongly protected by laws. However, firms tend to pay more dividends in countries of weak creditor rights since dividend payments are a substitute for poor legal protection of creditors. Furthermore, corporate dividend policy changes when tax laws change the comparative tax rates on dividends and capital gains.

This study investigates the connection between corporate governance and zombie firm’s exit time.

With a sample of 2,794 French zombie firms, the analysis focuses on four aspects of corporate governance: board size (BS), managerial ownership (MO), director turnover (DT) and ownership concentration, using tobit regression.

Dimensions of corporate governance have an important role in determining zombie firms’ exit time. MO and ownership concentration increase zombie firm exit time, whereas larger BSs and DT reduce it.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to include corporate governance as a characteristic relevant to zombie firms’ exit time. It provides new insights on why some zombie firms remain in the market longer than expected.

This study aims to investigate whether social reputation via corporate social responsibility (CSR) awarding facilitates access to debt and decreases the cost of debt and whether governance mechanisms moderate this relationship.

The sample covers the period between 2002 and 2021, during which CSR award data were available in the Thomson Reuters Eikon/Refinitiv database. The empirical models are based on country, industry and year fixed-effects regression.

While the main findings produced an insignificant result for access to debt, they indicated strong evidence for the positive relationship between CSR awarding and the cost of debt. Moreover, the moderating effect highlights that while the sustainability committee helps CSR-awarded companies access debt more easily, independent directors help firms decrease the cost of debt via CSR awarding. Furthermore, the results differ between the US and the non-US samples, earlier and recent periods, high- and low-leverage firms and large and small firms.

For the first time, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the authors assess whether social reputation via CSR awarding facilitates access to debt and decreases the cost of debt in an international and cross-industry sample. Little is known about the effect of social reputation on loan contracting, although social reputation conveys broader information that goes beyond the firm’s internal (performance) and external (reporting) CSR practices. The authors also draw attention to the differing roles of distinct governance mechanisms in leveraging social reputation for loan contracting.

This paper takes Chinese A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2021 as research samples to investigate the influence of supplier concentration on debt maturity structure and its mechanism. It further analyzes whether the relationship between the two is different in the case of different monetary policies, collateral assets, and total debt. The research conclusion is of practical significance for enterprises to construct a balanced debt maturity structure and prevent financial risks.

This paper adopts the empirical research method. The data came from the CSMAR database, which eliminated ST and *ST and companies with missing data, resulting in a sample of 20,328. Stata16 was used for statistical analysis.

There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between supplier concentration and debt maturity structure, and market position and trade credit play an intermediary role. In the case of tight monetary policy, fewer collateral assets, and higher total debt, the inverse U-shaped relationship is more significant.

This paper examines the relationship between supplier concentration and debt maturity structure from a non-linear perspective for the first time, providing theoretical support for enterprises to form a reasonable debt structure, and deepening the theoretical cognition of the relationship between supplier concentration and corporate debt maturity structure.

The primary purpose of this study is the development of Zimbabwe's rescue culture. The current framework for rescue operations was shaped by the historical development of laws pertaining to insolvency and liquidation. Socioeconomic pressures in Zimbabwe can be attributed to some of the main factors that led to the need for rescue legislation and restructuring, which in turn fueled the shift from a culture that supported credit to one that supported debtors. The aim of this study is to offer an overview of the key ideas and principles of the corporate rescue programs now implemented in Mauritius and to investigate the ways in which these ideas and principles impacted the newly enacted Zimbabwean Insolvency Act.

This study adopts a comparative legal approach using Zimbabwe and Mauritius as comparative case studies. The fact that both countries are former British colonies and their insolvency legal framework inspired by common law makes them appropriate to be compared. Legislation and case law are used to conduct the comparative study with the aim of Zimbabwe drawing lessons from the Mauritian legal framework on insolvency. Mauritius is a nearly ideal subject for a comparative case study because of its vibrant and fairly successful bankruptcy law framework, as well as its fictional corporate rescue culture. These might provide Zimbabwe with some motivation and guidance.

The legal framework on insolvency in Zimbabwe has been found to be too stringent and does not provide companies with any lifeline. There is arguably a tendency of forcing companies out of business rather than implementing a rescue culture. Selected aspects of the Mauritian legal framework on insolvency can be mapped onto the Zimbabwean system to implement a much-needed rescue culture given its challenging economic context.

This study contributes to comparative legal literature in the field of insolvency. It is among the very few research work that compares the legal structure on insolvency of Zimbabwe and Mauritius in a collaborative endeavor to enhance the insolvency law and its application in Zimbabwe.