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This study aims to trace the impact of corporate governance and its mechanisms in preventing companies from turning to fraudulent financial reporting.

For this purpose, using the systematic elimination pattern, the information of 187 listed companies on the Tehran Stock Exchange over six years from 2013 to 2019 were collected, and the hypotheses were examined using a linear regression model. To measure fraudulent financial reporting, the adjusted model of Beneish (1999) was used to evaluate corporate governance. Its mechanisms based on nine corporate governance mechanisms, including board independence, board remuneration, CEO financial expertise, expertise in CEO industry, board financial expertise, board industry expertise, board effort, CEO duality and managerial ownership, have been examined. These mechanisms are calculated as a combined index of corporate governance.

The findings indicate that robust corporate governance significantly reduces companies’ intention toward fraudulent financial reporting. In the same way, a negative and significant relationship was observed between each of the nine corporate governance mechanisms, except for board compensation and fraudulent financial reporting.

This study’s findings provide valuable insight into the importance of strengthening companies to prevent companies’ managers from engaging in fraudulent financial reporting activities. Hence, it is suggested that professional references bodies more seriously follow the rules to dictate to companies for using and empowering their corporate governance.

This study aims to track product market competition and financial flexibility on firms’ business strategies.

For this purpose, 187 listed firms on the Tehran Stock Exchange were selected by the systematic elimination for 2012–2018. The hypotheses were examined using the linear regression model. Ittner and Larcker’s (1997) model assesses the business strategy (dependent variable). The Herfindahl–Hirschman index is used to assess the product market competition (independent variable). Finally, the Frank and Goyal’s (2009) model investigates financial flexibility (independent variable).

The findings indicate that competition in the product market has significantly declined the resort of defensive and invasive business strategies and intensified opportunistic analytical and opportunistic strategies, benefiting from financial flexibility and facilitating defensive and opportunistic adaptation and decreased analytic and invasive strategies. Besides, the product market competition contributes to the firm’s financial flexibility and analytical, opportunistic, invasive and defensive strategies. Most of the studies in the field of business strategy analyzed some factors, such as performance (Zhang, 2016), tax avoidance (Higgins et al., 2015) and share pricing risk (Habib and Hasan, 2017). There is no study to assess the effect of business strategy on product market competition and financial flexibility.

The present study’s findings provide some invaluable concepts for firm managers on the significance of competition in the product market and financial flexibility. Focusing on competition intensity and flexibility level can deal with the board’s ambiguities on market structure and competitive status. The use of profitably competitive investment opportunities leads to selecting the most beneficial strategies, leading to a more efficient allocation of scarce resources and, finally, the enhancement of organizational performance.

Mental health is an inevitable and vital dimension when it comes to providing a global definition for the appropriate health status. This highlights the importance of investigating factors influencing utilization and out-of-pocket payments (OOP) for mental health services. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to assess the determinants of the utilization and OOP for psychiatric healthcare in Iran.

A total of 39,864 households were included in this cross-sectional study. Data on the utilization and OOP for psychiatric healthcare as well as all their determinants (e.g. wealth index of households, geographical area, household size, etc.) were extracted from the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES). The HIES was conducted by the Statistical Center of Iran in 2016. A zero-inflated Tobit model was used to identify the main factors affecting utilization and OOP for psychiatric healthcare utilization.

The average of utilization and OOP for psychiatric services was found to be 14.67 times per 1,000 households and $7.783 per month for service users, respectively. There were significant positive relationships between income and utilization (p=0.0002) and OOP (p<0.0001) for psychiatric services. Significant negative associations were found between the number of illiterate people in the household and OOP (coefficient=−1.56) and utilization (coefficient=−0.2002) for psychiatric services. Utilization and OOP for psychiatric services were statistically significantly higher among households with higher wealth status.

Despite the higher rate of mental disorders, the utilization of psychiatric services in Iran is very low. Due to financial barriers and insufficient insurance coverage, high socioeconomic status (SES) households utilize more psychiatric services than low-SES households. Thus, the integration of mental health services in public health programs is required to improve the utilization of psychiatric services in Iran.

Women and disadvantaged minorities within emerging and developing economies often resort to business activity within the informal economy as a way to overcome various barriers and challenges to formal workforce participation. This paper aims to explore the characteristics, motives, barriers and challenges of female engagement in informal business activities in Jordan.

The qualitative analysis used in this paper is based upon empirical findings from semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 14 female informal entrepreneurs in Amman, Jordan.

The study revealed that informal female entrepreneurs tend to be both opportunity- and necessity-driven. Generating profit and contributing to the household income seems to be their main motive. Their businesses were funded either through personal savings or from their social network (e.g. husband, family and friends). Promotion of the business relied mostly on word-of-mouth or social media. High inflation, high competition, time pressures and lack of business skills were cited as the biggest challenges. Besides being content with the status quo, lack of knowledge about the procedures for registering a business and fear of bureaucracy were among the main reasons for not legalizing their activities.

There are very few studies that analyse informal micro-entrepreneurship in the Arab world, particularly in the Jordanian context, which is of growing interest due to low number of women in the workforce and the growing number of refugees in the country. This study therefore presents new knowledge around women’s informal micro-entrepreneurship in Jordan and provides recommendations for further research and policy-making.