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This paper provides a stakeholder-based rationale for firm risk reduction through diversification. While firm-specific investments from stakeholders are often important sources of firm competitive advantage and economic rents, there is a reduced incentive for stakeholders to make these investments due to the risk associated with firm-specific investments. Since the risk associated with firm-specific investments is often related to the total firm risk level, we argue that stakeholders’ difficulties in diversifying the risks associated with their firm-specific investments create incentives for risk management by firms. We test this argument in a diversification setting. Based on a sample of firms’ first acquisition moves, we find that firms are more likely to engage in risk reduction through diversification when high levels of firm-specific assets are important to the firm's operations. Several proxies for stakeholders’ specific investments are found to be significant in explaining cross-sectional variation in the extent of ex ante risk reduction in acquisitions.

The present study aims to investigate the impact of corporate governance proxies by ownership structure and firm-specific characteristics, i.e. firm size, leverage, growth opportunities, previous year dividend, firm risk, profitability, and liquidity on dividend behavior of the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) listed firms.

Final sample of the study consists of 140 PSX-listed firms. The study covers a period of six years, starting from 2015 to 2020. Dividend payout dummy, dividend payout ratio, and dividend yield were used to assess the dividend behavior of the sample firms. The appropriate regression procedures (logistic, probit, ordinary least square (OLS), and fixed effect regression) are used to test the study hypothesis. To check the robustness of the result, a system GMM estimation technique is also used in the present study.

The study reveals that institutional ownership, foreign ownership, and individual ownership have a significant positive whereas managerial ownership has a significant negative impact on the dividend decision of sample firms. Among firm-specific characteristics, it was found that liquidity, profitability, and the previous year's dividend were significantly positive, while growth opportunities were significantly inversely associated with dividend payout decisions of PSX-listed firms.

This study sheds light on the relationship between dividend policy, ownership structure, and firm-specific factors in the context of an emerging market like Pakistan. The study's findings have important implications for managers, minority shareholders, lawmakers, and investors looking for guidance on the dividend policy of publicly-traded non-financial firms.

The literature lacks studies that together analyze the ownership characteristics and firm-specific variables on dividend decisions, particularly in the context of developing economies. The current study aims to fill this gap.

Efficiency wage theory predicts that firms can induce worker effort by the carrot of high wages and/or the stick of monitoring worker performance. Another option available to firms is to tilt the remuneration package over time such that the lure of high future earnings acts as a deterrent to current shirking. On the assumption that firms strive for the optimal trade-off between these various instruments, we develop a two-period model of efficiency wages in which increased monitoring attenuates the gradient of the wage-tenure profile. Our empirical analysis, using two cross sections of matched employer-employee British data, provides robust support for this prediction.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of market timing and pseudo market timing on equity issuance decisions of IPOs in an emerging economy – India. Indian new issues market provides a perfect setting to test market timing against pseudo market timing due to two reasons. First, the US literature shows that most underpriced IPOs are highly overvalued and in India, the authors have the evidence of underpricing of IPOs. But whether Indian IPOs are overvalued or not it is yet to be tested. Second, majority of IPOs were issued in India only after the 1991 economic reforms which may signal the evidence for pseudo market timing hypothesis.

The authors use direct test to examine the impact of market timing and pseudo market timing variables on the IPO activity. The direct tests of market timing and pseudo market timing hypotheses are based on the positive relation of market timing variables and market conditions variables with IPO activity. The authors examine the long-run performance of IPOs by using the calendar-time regression approach to test market timing against pseudo market timing. This serves as indirect test of market timing and pseudo market timing. Evidence of market timing using indirect test shows that there is a decline in the long-run stock performance of IPOs.

The results show that in India, firms issue equity not just due to market conditions but they also issue equity in order to time the market. The results of market timing are also supported by the calendar-time approach results. However, the authors find that the evidence of market timing is stronger for hot issue markets as compared to cold issue markets.

This is the first study to comprehensively examine market timing and pseudo market timing using direct and indirect tests for an emerging market context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact that three sets of variables – derived from transaction cost theory (TCT), the resource‐based view (RBV), and institutional environment – have on choice of entry strategies of multinational corporations (MNCs) from an emerging market.

The sample consisted of 819 Taiwanese firms which were investigated using a national survey, and logistic regression analysis was used for testing the hypotheses.

The empirical findings confirm that the following factors affect this decision: firm‐specific assets, international experience, whether a firm is investing abroad in pursuit of a particular customer, whether a firm seeks complementary assets abroad, and the perceived institutional differences (PEDs) between a firm's home country and the host country. The findings also suggest that PEDs have a moderating effect on foreign market entry.

As MNCs from emerging markets make the decision of entry mode strategies, they must carefully consider not only the related variables in terms of TCT and the RBV, but also the influence of institutional factors in host countries.

This paper explores the modes of entry chosen by Taiwanese firms investing in China on the basis of TCT, institutional environment, and the RBV.

The objective of this paper is threefold. First, it aims to empirically study whether firm-specific/idiosyncratic uncertainty, macroeconomic/aggregate uncertainty and political uncertainty have an adverse influence on firms' investment decisions in Pakistan. After establishing this, it scrutinizes whether the uncertainty effects on investment are different for firms of different sizes. Finally, it investigates whether any heterogeneity exists in the uncertainty impacts across different industries.

The empirical analysis is based on an unbalanced panel data of 468 nonfinancial firms listed at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) during the period 2000–2018. Departing from the literature, the paper builds a time-varying composite volatility/uncertainty index based on the principal component analysis (PCA) by utilizing the constructed volatility series for sales, cash flows and return on assets to gauge firm-specific uncertainty for each firm included in the analysis. Likewise, the paper develops a PCA-based composite index for macroeconomic uncertainty by using the conditional variance series of consumer price index (CPI), industrial production index (IPI), the interest rate and the exchange rate obtained by estimating the (generalized) autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic, (G)ARCH, models. Finally, political uncertainty is measured by political risk components maintained by the Political Risk Services Group. The empirical framework of the paper augments the standard investment equation by incorporating all three types of uncertainty. Firms are grouped into small, medium and large categories based on firms' total assets and the size indicators are generated. Next, the indicators are multiplied by each uncertainty measure to quantify the differential effects of uncertainty across firm size. Firms are also differentiated by sectors to explore the sector-based asymmetries in the uncertainty effects. The “robust two-step system generalized method of moments (2SYS GMM) (dynamic panel data) estimator” is applied to estimate the empirical models.

The results provide robust and strong evidence of the detrimental influence of all three types of uncertainty on investment. Yet, it is observed that the strength of the influence considerably varies across uncertainty types. In particular, compared to firm-specific uncertainty, both macroeconomic and political uncertainties have more unfavorable effects. The analysis also reveals that the effects of all three types of uncertainty are quite different at small, medium and large firms. Specifically, it is observed that although the investment of all firms is influenced adversely by magnified uncertainty, the adverse effects of all three kinds of uncertainty are quite stronger at small firms than medium and large firms. These findings support the phenomenon of size-based asymmetries in the effects of uncertainty on investment. The results also provide evidence that either type of uncertainty quite differently affects the investment policy of firms in different sectors.

The findings help different stakeholders to know how different types of uncertainty differently affect corporate firms' investments. Further, they suggest that firm size has a vital role in ascertaining the adverse effects of uncertainty on investment. The paper identifies to which type of uncertainty investors and policymakers should care more about and to which types of firms and industries they should concern more during volatile times. Firms should have more fixed assets and expand their size to mitigate the detrimental effects on investment of internal and external uncertainties. The government should enhance the political stability to induce firms for a higher level of investment, which, in turn, will result in higher growth of the economy.

The originality of the paper is credited to four aspects. First, unlike most previous studies that have utilized a single volatility measure, this paper constructs composite uncertainty indices based on the weights determined by the PCA. Second, it examines the effect of political uncertainty over and above the effects of idiosyncratic and aggregate (macroeconomic uncertainty) for an emerging economy. Third, and most important, it provides first-hand empirical evidence on the role of firm size in establishing the asymmetric effects of uncertainty on investment. Finally, it provides evidence on the industry-based heterogeneity in the uncertainty effects.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a meta‐analysis of the effect of: auditor and audit‐related variables; and firm‐specific variables on auditors' propensity to issue modified audit opinions. Auditor and audit‐related variables include Big N affiliation, audit firm industry specialization, audit firm and audit partner tenure, provision of non audit services and audit report lag. Some of the important firm‐specific variables include firm size, leverage, and profitability.

The Stouffer combined test is employed as the meta‐analysis technique for this paper. The test produces a z‐statistic that can be used to test the direction and significance of the effect of the hypothesized variables on the propensity of auditors to issue modified audit opinions. A total of 73 published studies are aggregated from 1982 to 2011.

Meta‐analysis result reveals that the effect of audit and auditor‐related variables on audit opinion decisions is far from conclusive. Big N affiliation and audit report lag variables are found to be positively related while the association between non‐audit fees and modified audit opinion decisions is negative. However, the significant effect of non‐audit fee variable is found only in non US studies. Evidence on the effect of firm‐specific variables on auditors' propensity to issue modified audit opinions is broadly consistent with hypotheses formulated in the published studies.

Meta‐analysis statistically aggregates results across individual studies and corrects for statistical artefacts like sampling and measurement error and, thereby, provides much greater precision with respect to the findings, compared with narrative reviews. The findings should be relevant for the current project on audit reporting initiated by the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB).

Audit opinion formulation is a complex procedure that culminates in the issuance of appropriate audit opinions. This paper adds value to the strand of audit opinion formulation research by documenting that some of the variables are more significant in explaining auditors' modified audit opinion decisions compared to other variables.

The main aim of the paper is to examine the small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) capital structure determinants in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) (Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania).

The authors used panel models to analyze financial data of 15,253 companies operating in the years 2014–2017.

The authors confirmed the dominant role of firm-specific factors. Industry and country variables explain only 4% of debt variability of the surveyed companies. The direction of influence of the diagnosed firm-specific factors is consistent with the pecking order theory. About one-fourth of SMEs in CEE hold a stock of debt capacity. It negatively affects the share of debt in the capital. The authors did not confirm the influence of the systematic industry business risk.

The limitations of the study are (1) the inclusion of only six CEE countries in the sample; (2) the exclusion of microenterprises from the sample; (3) the capital structure relationships are observed following the applications of static panel; (4) the endogeneity issue has not been addressed in the model.

This study shows that business-friendly institutional environment is an important factor influencing the indebtedness of companies. It increases the leverage and, consequently, the return on equity, especially in CEE countries.

SME analyses in CEE countries are not as frequent as for other regions. Despite the classical determinants of the SMEs' capital structure, the authors have included debt capacity and systematic industry business risk in this study.

In this chapter, the performance of Swiss mountain ropeway companies in the period from 2011 to 2016 have been analyzed. The sample includes 194 observations from 43 companies, covering about 90% of the market. In order to explain the levels of cash-flow returns, the degree of self-financing and revenue growth for ropeway companies, firm-specific characteristics, meteorological data, infrastructure information and market-specific factors were taken into account. The results, which are based on a general method of moments estimates, reveal that a high equity ratio and consistent capital expenditures are important for performance. Also, the market environment, including such factors as exchange rates and brand recognition of ski areas in Europe and Asia, are important for firm performance. Overall, the Swiss market is a unique country for this type of analysis, given either that the required data on mountain ropeway companies in other countries are unavailable or that a few rather large companies dominate the market.

The aim of the paper is to analyze whether performance measures and their factors for microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Muslim countries are significantly different from those in their non-Muslim counterparts, central to the Islamic scholars' argument that religious and cultural norms in Muslim countries may drive the preference of Islamic microfinance over conventional microfinance.

Using a cross-sectional dataset of 2,138 firm-years for 754 different MFIs across 83 countries, 33 Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) member Muslim countries and 50 non-member countries, we analyzed the MFI performance based on three sets of measures: outreach, loan recovery and profitability and overall financial performance measures, with respect to two sets of explanatory variables, namely, country-specific and firm-level variables.

Results show that country gross domestic product size is positively related with profitability, and the percentage of women borrowers is also significant in driving loan recovery and firm profitability in the OIC sample, but they are otherwise not significant for the rest of the world sample.

This study contributes to the understanding of the core argument in the motivation of Islamic MFIs, which is whether cultural and religious factors are important for MFI success in Muslim countries.

This study introduces a variable that measures the difference between a country's independence year and their OIC membership year as a proxy for the “country religious inclination” of a Muslim country. Results suggest that countries with delayed membership in OIC show lower inclination to popular Islamic beliefs and higher market penetration of conventional microfinance outreach. Positive relationships among a country's religious inclination and loan loss ratios and loan provisions are also consistent with the moral hazard hypothesis that few religious communities may be more prone to default.