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The purpose of this research is to examine whether board gender diversity reduces the agency costs of firms in the context of Chinese listed firms.

This paper uses a large sample of 23,340 firm-year observations of Chinese listed companies during 2004–2017. The authors use ordinary least squares regressions as the primary methodology with a wide range of methods to control for endogeneity and to check robustness, including the fixed-effect method, instrumental variable approach, lagged gender diversity measures, propensity score matching, Blau index, Shannon index and industry-adjusted measures of agency costs.

The evidence reveals that the participation of female directors in corporate board reduces agency costs, which correlates with conflicts of interest. Moreover, gender-diverse boards are more effective in state-owned enterprises (SOEs), in which agency issues are more severe. Female directors also provide better monitoring roles in more-developed areas. Finally, corporate boards that have a critical mass of female directors have a greater tendency to reduce agency costs as compared to their token participation. Overall, all findings support the validity of agency theory.

This study shows the economic benefit of female directors in the boardroom by reducing agency costs and by improving firms' governance structure. Regarding the government, which is gradually introducing board gender diversity policies, this study provides valuable pragmatic information for Chinese regulators on this issue.

This study extends the literature by providing evidence that gender diversity in boardroom matters for shareholders' wealth maximization. It provides novel evidence that a critical mass of female directors is more effective in reducing agency costs compared to a single female on the board, and that the effect of gender diversity varies in relation to ownership structure and region.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the effects of accruals-based earnings management (AEM), International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) adoption and stock market integration for firms that belong to Latin-American Integrated Market (MILA).

The GMM estimator was used according to Arellano and Bover (1995) for panel data on a sample of 478 non-financial companies between 2000 and 2016. Multilevel mixed models was used for the robustness analysis.

AEM practices significantly and dynamically reduce agency costs. This result suggests companies use positive discretionary accruals to hide true agency costs and avoid shareholders monitoring, while negative discretionary accruals are ways to expropriate wealth and increase agency costs. This result implies that firms use AEM as a predetermined strategy to weaken corporate governance. The IFRS adoption and MILA implementation reduced agency costs. However, only IFRS adoption had the capability to mitigate the effects of AEM on agency costs.

These results reveal AEM constitutes a practice that managers use to weaken firms’ corporate governance and expropriate wealth from shareholders. These practices have effects at short-run and long-run. However, the IFRS adoption and market integration represented by MILA are mitigating factors for agency costs. These results have relevant implications for firms’ corporate governance because they guide investors and shareholders to strengthen corporate control and monitoring on business decision-making. These results also are relevant to policymakers because they orient the financial policies design to strengthen the benefits of IFRS and MILA.

This study aims to examine the relation between long-term debt and internationalization in the presence of the agency costs of debt and business risk.

Sample firms consist of 517 non-financial listed firms in Malaysia, with 4,197 firm-year observations from the year 2000 to 2014. This study uses panel data regressions and a series of robustness tests to examine the hypotheses.

The results show that multinational corporations (MNCs) are more likely to sustain less long-term debt than domestic corporations (DCs) to mitigate the costs related to agency problem and firm risk. Meanwhile, foreign-based MNCs maintain less long-term debt than local-based firms, and the finding is more significant at a higher degree of internationalization. Robustness tests confirm the negative relations.

The findings indicate that the ongoing debate on the debt financing puzzle can be explained by internationalization. Moreover, the findings suggest that in addition to the systematic differences between MNCs and DCs, studies on the debt financing and internationalization should also account for the systematic differences among MNCs such as the local-based MNCs, foreign-based MNCs and DCs that later expand their business operations abroad.

MNCs have to be responsive to the diverse institutional environments as they diversify their business operations geographically. When the adverse effects of internationalization outweigh the benefits, MNCs could use the long-term debt financing decision to mitigate the costs of doing business abroad. This is because debt financing is also a primary concern in the corporate financial decisions for the maximization of shareholders’ wealth.

This study contributes to the debt financing literature from the international perspective by providing evidence from an emerging market. In addition, this study highlights the importance of recognizing firms by their firm-specific characteristics, such as internationalization, given the systematic differences among firms.

We examine the mode of international expansion as an equilibrium governance contract between home country and host country factor owner. The focus is on agency costs, a form of transactions costs. Two phenomena are shown to be related to the agency costs imposed by factor owners: (i) the choice of different modes of international expansion by one firm in different locations, and (ii) the simultaneous occurrence of several forms of foreign involvement in the same location. We attempt to characterize the dynamic relationship between the mode of an offshore operation and changes in factor market conditions that affect agency costs.

This chapter applies the Consortium for Advanced Management, International (CAM-I) Activity-Based Cost Management (ABC/M) tool to paratransit. The intent is to enable agencies sponsoring rides to save money through sharing rides and vehicle-time.

Several paratransit cost-allocation models from Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) and other sources are reviewed and one is adapted to the ABC/M methodology, based upon the author’s previous work proportionately allocating ride time among sponsoring agencies at a consolidated human service transportation agency and the price sheets used in contracted operations to minimize financial risk.

Through application of the principles of ABC/M, paratransit providers can properly allocate costs, determine the costs of providing proposed new services, plan for future vehicle acquisitions, and motivate their customers to tailor their transportation needs in a manner that will save them money and boost efficiency.

University-based transportation studies programs may be motivated to apply these strategies to urban and rural paratransit providers that serve several customer agencies.

If agencies sponsoring paratransit rides understand that funds can purchase more rides during off-peak hours or if rides are shared with clients of other agencies, then paratransit resources can be used more efficiently and to the benefit of more individuals.

By enabling the provision of more rides, a greater number of riders will be enabled to reach necessary services and participate in community life.

This is the first application of the ABC/M methodology to paratransit (and transit) and possibly to social services.

This study aims to examine the effects of agency cost on auditor choice. This paper also deals with the moderating role of the board’s financial expertise (Bfe) and the status of the internal control (Intecon) system on the relationship between agency cost and auditor selection.

This study’s sample consists of 1,040 firm-year observations of Iranian nonfinancial companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange from 2012 to 2019. The information required for this research is mainly extracted from Comprehensive Database of All Listed Companies (in Iran Stock Exchange). Data from 130 companies were obtained during the research period. This study used logistic regression to test the hypotheses.

The findings indicate that companies with higher agency costs choose the auditor from lower classes. As the proportion of financial expert members on the board increases, the intensity of this relationship will be reduced. Companies with higher agency costs choose the auditor from the lower classes, but the higher the ratio of financial expert board members, the more these companies will choose high-quality auditors. However, findings showed that the status of the Intecon system has no moderating effect on the relationship between agency costs and auditor selection.

The results of this study can expand the existing literature on the relationship between auditor selection and agency costs and the factors affecting this relationship, especially the Bfe and Intecon. This research has significant suggestions for regulators, stakeholders, shareholders and analysts in emerging economies that may encounter similar contextual implications.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of free cash flow (FCF) on the agency costs and how these FCF and agency costs affect the performance of REITs in Asia. Unlike previous studies that focus on conventional public listed companies and non-regulated industry, the Asian REIT industry being a highly regulated industry provides a new context for further research.

The samples for this study comprise REIT data from four major Asian REIT countries, namely, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. These countries are the leaders in Asian REITs which account for 94 percent of the total market capitalization of REITs in Asia. The study period is from 2002 to 2012 using panel data. This study employs GMM method which is more robust compared to previous studies that used pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) and other panel data methods.

The results indicate that FCF and agency costs persist over time in Asian REITs even though REITs are in a highly regulated industry. The findings also imply that REIT managers face substantial costs when they wish to adjust to the equilibrium level of agency costs, whereby the optimum level is always dynamic and not constant over time and moves with the changes in the determinants of agency costs. These agency costs persist over time and have significant impacts on the performance of REITs in Asia.

There are limited data in selling, general and administrative expenses in Asian REITs which render only limited use of selling, general and administrative expenses ratio in this empirical study on Asian REITs. For future research, researchers can embark on research studies on issues that might determine the speed of adjustment toward the equilibrium level of agency costs in Asian REITs.

For REIT regulators in Asia, this empirical study helps to provide useful information for policy planning and formulation in REIT corporate governance; and to transform the inherent satellite structure of the externally managed REIT structure into internally managed REIT structure. For REIT managers and practitioners, this empirical study serves as a reflection for them which helps them to be more aware of the dynamism of FCF and agency costs in REITs; and alert them that these FCF and agency costs persist over time which can have significant impacts on the REIT performance, return on assets and return on equity, REIT value and REIT return, respectively in Asia. Thus, they could consider internalizing their REIT management structure for better and more efficient management in REITs in order to mitigate the agency costs that are persistent over time. As a whole, this empirical study contributes significant benefits to all level of the REIT industry in Asia.

This implies that the REITs in Asia should consider internally managed REIT structure since the agency costs persist over time and there are always dynamic and not constant over time and moves with the changes in the determinants of agency costs. The findings also imply that the regulators in Asian REITs should enforce absolute stringent corporate governance rules and regulations in order to govern the existing inherent satellite structure of the externally managed REITs in Asia.

This empirical study contributes significant benefits to all levels of the REIT industry in Asia and the current limited literature on Asian REITs by examining the impact of FCF and agency costs on the performance of REITs in Asia. This is the first research to embark on FCF and agency costs on REITs in Asia. Furthermore, this study employs GMM method which is more robust compared to previous studies that used pooled OLS and other panel data methods.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether specific corporate governance mechanisms, such as board size, board composition, leverage and firm size, tend to mitigate agency cost occurrence in the USA, Russia and Norway.

The authors analyze the sample of 243 US, 196 Russian and 175 Norwegian joint stock companies for the period 2004-2012. The regression analysis is applied to test the models.

It is revealed that larger boards increase agency costs (measured by asset utilization ratio and asset liquidity ratio) in all sample companies. The proportion of female members has a very slight positive effect in US companies, a negative influence on agency costs in the Norwegian sample and is not significant in the Russian market. The authors find that the big Russian and US companies in the samples of this paper have lower agency costs.

The results of this paper show which agency-mitigation mechanisms work more effectively in companies operating in the analyzed countries characterized by specific corporate governance models.

The main contribution of this paper to the empirical literature is that it extends the stream of agency research by introducing new, emerging markets: represented by Scandinavian (depicted by the Norwegian sample) and Russian companies. Considering that each market – US, Norwegian and Russian – represents significant distinguishing features in their institutional framework, the paper provides an important research setting in which corporate governance mechanisms can be analyzed from the perspective of a country’s peculiar characteristics. Unlike other agency cost studies, this paper accounts for the gender diversity component in the companies and contributes to gender diversity issues.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of external and internal corporate governance mechanisms on agency costs.

The author uses data from German firms that were listed in the regulated market of the Frankfurt Stock exchange during 2006-2011. Agency costs were measured using stochastic frontier analysis, a relatively new approach to estimate agency costs. The regression analysis is applied to test the model.

The results indicate that an industry specialized audit firm, the presence of a large audit firm, abnormal audit fees, management ownership and variable management compensation are significantly negatively associated with the level of a firms’ agency costs. In contrast, this seems not to be true for the existence of an audit committee for which the results of the paper document a non-significant association.

The paper contributes to the existing literature in several ways. First, the research design is to the best of the authors’ knowledge the first that investigates the influence of different corporate governance mechanisms on the level of agency costs. Second, previous studies are mainly focused on the US audit market. This focus on the US audit market leaves uncertainties regarding the direction and magnitude of the empirical relationship in the European and German environmental context. Finally, the paper provides initial empirical evidence for a sample of German IFRS listed companies (IFRS – International Financial Reporting Standards).

This chapter examines the relationship between corporate governance and agency costs of family and non-family ownership of public listed companies in Malaysia. It presents a longitudinal study of the 290 publicly listed companies in the Main Board of the Bursa Malaysia over the period 1999–2005.The study applies the governance mechanisms such as board size, independent director and duality as a tool in monitoring agency costs based on asset utilization ratio and expense ratio as proxy for agency costs. There is strong evidence that larger board size has a significant effect as a device in mitigating agency costs. The study supports that independent directors and duality are viewed differently by family and non-family ownership. The evidence shows that an independent director in family ownership does not influence agency costs. But non-family ownership needs more independent directors to counsel and monitor the company and thus reducing the agency conflict with shareholders. The study also finds that family ownership experiences less agency conflicts when duality role exists. Contrary, non family ownership experiences high agency costs when duality exists on board.