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The readability of annual reports is an important feature that determines the quality of communication between a firm and its stakeholders. Extant literature has demonstrated that readability characteristics of annual reports are crucial in facilitating the investor's ability to process and analyze information, resulting in higher firm performance and lower agency costs. This study examines the relationship between annual report readability, agency costs and the firm performance of listed financial sector companies in Oman.

Using a sample of 150 firm-year observations of listed financial sector companies on the Muscat Securities Market (MSM) over the period 2014 to 2018, a panel regression analysis is used, along with the system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation to address endogeneity concerns. The readability of annual reports is proxied by the length of the annual report, the Flesch reading ease and the Flesch–Kincaid index.

The ordinary least squares (OLS) results suggest that readability proxied by the length of the annual report has no significant relationship with agency cost, return on assets (ROA) or stock returns. The OLS results are confirmed through the system GMM estimation model for agency costs, Tobin's Q and stock returns. Easier-to-read annual reports measured by the Flesch reading ease demonstrate high asset utilization ratio and Tobin's Q. These results emphasize Flesch reading ease measure in explaining the economic significance of agency cost and Tobin's Q. In contrast, difficult-to-read annual reports are observed for firms with high ROA.

The study is limited to the financial sector. Its generalizability could be extended to a similar sector or countries with features similar to Oman. Future studies on readability could be extended to other sectors of Oman, and financial firms with easier-to-read annual reports show a high Tobin's Q, which reflects the confidence of investors in the stock market. These findings may encourage policymakers to regulate the readability features of annual reports and influence the reporting quality of financials and disclosures also including cross-country comparisons.

Financial firms with easier-to-read annual reports show a high Tobin's Q, which reflects the confidence of investors in the stock market. These findings may encourage policymakers to regulate the readability features of annual reports and influence the reporting quality of financials and disclosures.

While the study extends prior literature on readability, agency costs and firm performance, it is also one of the first to examine the financial sector of an emerging country, namely, Oman. The study supports the obfuscation hypothesis through the association of readability measure with agency cost. Unlike prior research that has focused on common computational linguistic literature, this study uses three proxies for readability to assess information quality.

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.

Based on agency perspective on temporary agency workers, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between firms’ agency problems and agency cost on agency workers; moreover, intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation are considered in seeking to understand how they moderate this relationship.

Using the Hsinchu Science Park directory of corporate affiliations as a sample frame, the authors adopted a paired questionnaire which included two parts in order to consider the possible problem of common method variances. The first part is completed by the manager of the firms and the second part is completed by his/her temporary agency workers. Finally, 94 firms completed questionnaires, providing a total sample of 94 R&D managers and 458 temporary agency workers. The rate of participation was 31.65 percent.

Using a questionnaire survey of 94 high-tech firms, from which a total of 94 R&D managers and 458 temporary agency workers participated, the results show that firms’ agency problems have a positive influence on the agency cost of monitoring temporary agency workers. In addition, while this relationship is negatively moderated by extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation has a non-significant moderating effect.

The managers of firms should consider not only the short-term flexibility of employing temporary agency workers, but also the long-term cultivation of promoting great agency workers. This could maximize the efficiency of the interaction between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Of course, the firms should think about how to reduce the agency problems created by goal conflict, information asymmetry and risk sharing with temporary agency workers, because this could also provide a chance for the firms to decrease agency costs spent on monitoring.

This paper aims to examine the impact of managerial equity ownership on return on assets as a measure of profitability and two financial statement‐based agency cost measures, i.e. asset utilization and an expense ratio, which proxy for management's efficiency in use of assets and perquisite consumption, respectively.

Multivariate tests are constructed to examine the nonlinear relation between managerial equity ownership and both profitability and agency costs, using interaction terms to capture the relation at various levels of managerial ownership.

The paper documents that managerial equity ownership is nonlinearly and positively associated with return on assets and asset utilization, and nonlinearly and negatively associated with the expense ratio, after controlling for firm size, leverage, corporate diversification, institutional ownership, research intensity, firm age, and executive stock options.

The results imply that the ability of managerial equity ownership to reduce agency costs decreases as levels of ownership increase. Further, the results indicate that, in some industries, high levels of ownership lead to increased expense ratios, suggesting increased perquisite consumption. Finally, these results suggest that, above a certain level in some industries, managerial equity ownership only marginally encourages efficient asset utilization but does not significantly deter excessive spending.

The paper provides a link between research that demonstrates a linear relation between managerial equity ownership and financial‐statement based profitability and agency cost measures and research that finds a nonlinear relation between managerial equity ownership and Tobin's Q, a proxy for firm performance.

On the basis of principal-agent and financing constraints theories, the purpose of this paper is to construct a unified research framework via mathematical models and to provide a logical and consistent explanation of the contradictory discovery of the relationship between dividend payment and I-CFO in the previous literature.

Establishing the economic mathematical models, this paper uses the comparative static analysis to figure out the equilibrium results, to further testify the conclusions, the authors initiate the empirical tests to make the discussion more realistic.

The authors observe that overinvestment caused by agency problems is the primary reason for I-C sensitivity when the investment expenditure is less than the internal capital; dividend payout suppresses the overinvestment caused by the agency problem, thus alleviating the investment’s dependence on the internal capital. However, underinvestment caused by the financing constraints is the primary cause of I-C sensitivity when the investment expenditure is greater than the internal capital. The payment of cash dividends increases the investment shortage caused by the financing constraints, thus increasing the sensitivity. Further, the authors explore the impact of dividend payments on I-CFO sensitivity. They argue that dividend payment is not an appropriate measure of financing constraints. Both I-CFO sensitivity and I-C sensitivity are functions of agency cost and information cost.

This study provides a logical and consistent explanation of the contradictory discovery of the relationship between dividend payment and I-CFO in the previous literature and provides a clear framework and reference for future studies on the impact of financial constraints, agency cost on the investment’s dependence on the internal capital.

The theoretical model of this paper supports this differentiated mandatory dividend policy and provides reference and evidence for China's financing policies and dividend distribution policies.

This study theoretically and empirically analyzes and verifies the roles of agency cost and financial constraints on the determinants of I-C sensitivity for the first time. First, different from earlier literature, this paper puts forward I-C sensitivity as a new measure of investment’s dependence on internal capital, making the measurement more accurate. In the case of a firm with positive liquidity reserves, using the I-CFO sensitivity as a measure of external financing constraints could overestimate the firm’s financial constraints. Second, by constructing an economic static analysis framework, this study analyzes how I-C and I-CFO sensitivities change with the agency cost, the financing constraints and the dividend payment ratio. The research provides a basic framework and explanation on the contradictions of the earlier literature. The results are supposed to serve as a foundation for estimations of investment’s dependence on internal capital and should be embedded in general empirical tests in future research.

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.