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We explore the impact of equity liquidity on a firm’s dynamic leverage adjustments and the moderating impacts of leverage deviation and target instability on the link between equity liquidity and dynamic leverage in the UK market.

In applying the two-step system GMM, we estimate our model by exploring suitable instruments for the dynamic variable(s), i.e. lagged values of the dynamic term(s).

Our analyses document that a firm’s equity liquidity has a positive impact on the speed of adjustment (SOA) of its leverage ratio back to the target ratio in the UK market. We also demonstrate that the positive relationship between liquidity and SOA is more pronounced for firms whose current position is relatively close to their target leverage ratio and whose target ratio is relatively stable.

This study provides important implications for both firms’ managers and investors. Particularly, firms’ managers who wish to increase the leverage SOA to enhance firms’ value need to give great attention to their equity liquidity. Investors who want to evaluate firms’ performance could also consider their equity liquidity and leverage SOA.

We are the first to enrich the literature on leverage adjustments by identifying equity liquidity as a new determinant of SOA in a single developed country with many differences in the structure and development of capital markets, ownership concentration and institutional characteristics. We also provide new empirical evidence of the joint effect of equity liquidity, leverage deviation and target instability on leverage SOA.

This study aimed to develop a psychometrically reliable job satisfaction (JS) measure for university employees, guiding administrative decisions and monitoring satisfaction over time in public universities.

A JS survey developed by a Brazilian federal university’s sustainability committee containing 58 items across physical, cognitive and organizational domains was longitudinally tested with 1,214 responses collected. The data were analyzed using Item Response Theory (IRT) analysis, employing the Graded Response Model, with tools such as frequency analysis, item characteristic curve, and full-information factor analysis in RStudio. The scale’s criterion validity was also established via expert qualitative interpretation.

The instrument’s internal consistency was confirmed as the results demonstrated its high reliability with a marginal reliability coefficient of 0.95. Significant findings revealed that recognition and supervisor relationships were key discriminators of JS and that workers began to perceive satisfaction when basic environmental conditions were met.

It is important to mention that the application of this scale is specifically limited to higher education institutions and may not be directly applicable to other educational settings or industry sectors without modifications.

Although numerous measures and scales have been developed to assess JS, one elaborated by using IRT in a public university environment was lacking. Due to shifting dynamics in the workplace, traditional measurement of JS has proven inadequate, necessitating a more precise, accessible and updated tool. The developed scale allows precisely targeted interventions to improve JS and can be reapplied to evaluate their effectiveness. This research thus contributes a valuable tool for academic organizational psychology, enhancing the understanding of the measurement of JS.

This paper aims to examine the return and volatility transmission among economic policy uncertainty (EPU), geopolitical risk (GPR), their interaction (EPGR) and five tradable precious metals: gold, silver, platinum, palladium and rhodium.

Applying time-varying parameter vector autoregression (TVP-VAR) frequency-based connectedness approach to a data set spanning from January 1997 to February 2023, the study analyzes return and volatility connectedness separately, providing insights into how the data, in return and volatility forms, differ across time and frequency.

The results of the return connectedness show that gold, palladium and silver are affected more by EPU in the short term, while all precious metals are influenced by GPR in the short term. EPGR exhibits strong contributions to the system due to its elevated levels of policy uncertainty and extreme global risks. Palladium shows the highest reaction to EPGR, while silver shows the lowest. Return spillovers are generally time-varying and spike during critical global events. The volatility connectedness is long-term driven, suggesting that uncertainty and risk factors influence market participants’ long-term expectations. Notable peaks in total connectedness occurred during the Global Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, with the latter being the highest.

Using the recently updated news-based uncertainty indicators, the study examines the time and frequency connectedness between key uncertainty measures and precious metals in their returns and volatility forms using the TVP-VAR frequency-based connectedness approach.

This study aims to explore the impact of systematic liquidity risk on the averaged cross-sectional equity return of the Indian equity market. It also examines the effects of illiquidity and decomposed illiquidity on the conditional volatility of the equity market.

The present study employs the Liquidity Adjusted Capital Asset Pricing Model (LCAPM) for pricing systematic liquidity risk using the Fama & MacBeth cross-sectional regression model in the Indian stock market from January 1, 2012, to March 31, 2021. Further, the study employed an exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic (1,1) model to observe the impact of decomposed illiquidity on the equity market’s conditional volatility. The study also uses the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) model to illuminate the return-volatility-liquidity relationship.

The study’s findings indicate that the commonality between individual security liquidity and aggregate liquidity is positive, and the covariance of individual security liquidity and the market return negatively affects the expected return. The study’s outcome specifies that illiquidity time series analysis exhibits the asymmetric effect of directional change in return on illiquidity. Further, the study indicates a significant impact of illiquidity and decomposed illiquidity on conditional volatility. This suggests an asymmetric effect of illiquidity shocks on conditional volatility in the Indian stock market.

This study is one of the few studies that used the World Uncertainty Index (WUI) to measure liquidity and market risks as specified in the LCAPM. Further, the findings of the reverse impact of illiquidity and decomposed higher and lower illiquidity on conditional volatility confirm the presence of price informativeness and its immediate effects on illiquidity in the Indian stock market. The study strengthens earlier studies and offers new insights into stock market liquidity to clarify the association between liquidity and stock return for effective policy and strategy formulation that can benefit investors.

This study investigates the relationship between foreign ownership, earnings quality and overinvestment in Japanese zombie firms.

The study makes use of data from Japanese firms listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange from 2009 to 2019. The study employs logistic and multinomial logistic models to test whether the overinvestment behavior of zombie firms is mitigated by foreign shareholdings and earnings quality.

The results show that (1) zombie firms tend to overinvest; (2) an increase in foreign ownership mitigates the overinvestment of zombie firms and (3) the mitigation of zombie firms' overinvestment by foreign ownership is stronger with higher earnings quality.

This study extends the discussion of earnings quality and investment efficiency to the zombie firm setting. Previous studies in accounting suggest that high earnings quality enhances firms' investment efficiency. The findings suggest that both a change in ownership structure and high-quality accounting information are necessary to mitigate the inefficiency of zombie firms.

The current paper aims at exploring the audit committee characteristics’ effect on impression management.

The methodology is based on the use of the content analysis of financial annual reports, as data of a 69-company sample study from 2015 to 2019 attained from “Amman Stock Exchange” has been analyzed. Moreover, multiple regression analysis on panel data was employed.

The results show that the independence of the audit committee, the financial expertise of the audit committee and female members negatively affect impression management, implying that these characteristics mitigate financial reporting manipulation and decrease the practices of impression management. However, the findings detect no significant influence for committee meetings on impression management.

Notably, the current work is applicable and useful for understanding the audit committee’s role in enhancing the financial reporting’s quality, along with the significance of the audit committee in growing the stakeholder’s confidence in financial reporting. In light of these results, regulatory bodies’ efforts are encouraged to create additional strategies and instructions to ensure the trustiness and credibility of financial reporting.

This paper will be useful to companies that want to improve the quality of financial reporting and decrease the impression of management’s effect on financial reporting’s readers. Moreover, this paper contributes to the literature on impression management by exploring the effect of audit committees on impression management of annual financial reports of the users in the context of emerging markets and Middle East countries, particularly Jordan.

This study aims to evaluate the presence of abnormal returns due to stock splits or reverse stock splits in the Brazilian capital market context.

The event study technique was used on data from 518 events that occurred in a 30-year period (1987–2016), comprising 167 stock splits and 351 reverse stock splits.

The results revealed the occurrence of abnormal returns around the time the shares began trading stock splits or reverse stock splits at a statistical significance level of 5%. The main conclusion is that stock split and reverse stock split operations represent opportunities for extraordinary gains and may serve as a reference for investment strategies in the Brazilian stock market.

This study innovates by including reverse stock splits, as the existing literature focuses on stock splits, and by testing two distinct “zero” dates that of the ordinary general meeting that approved the share alteration and the “ex” date of the alteration, when the shares were effectively traded, reverse split or split.

The cost of equity (COE) and corporate governance structure are the most critical factors affecting competition among publicly held companies. Accordingly, the present paper aims to examine the relationship between corporate governance and the COE in the wake of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Iraq.

Our statistical sample includes 34 companies listed on the Iraq Stock Exchange from 2012 to 2017. Board structure (i.e. board size, board independence, CEO tenure, board meetings frequency and CEO duality) and ownership structure (managerial ownership, institutional ownership and state ownership) are considered proxies for corporate governance structure. Besides, the authors employ the Capital Asset Pricing Model to measure the COE as our dependent variable. Multiple regression analysis and Exploratory Factor Analysis are also used to estimate the research models.

Our results suggest that corporate governance structure plays a significant role in reducing COE during the ISIS era. Furthermore, the authors find that corporate governance can be an alternative to COE reduction in Iraq’s absence of national security. Our findings also indicate that board size, board meeting frequency, managerial ownership and institutional ownership are negatively associated with COE.

Although this study has been thoroughly considered and cautiously planned, the specific period chosen to conduct the research (i.e. the ISIS era) could be a significant limitation since financial disclosure of listed companies may have been of lower quality during this period. However, to relatively alleviate this limitation and maintain the authenticity of the findings, the authors exclude low-quality financial statements, particularly non-audited financial reports, from the statistical sample. Furthermore, practitioners of emerging markets that are suffering from a weak external corporate governance combination can use the findings of this paper as a guideline to compensate the existing market deficiencies by improving internal corporate governance for observing further cash sources with lower cost. The findings also propose to international agencies that the business environment in Iraq is heavily affected by the ISIS phenomenon and needs financial aid to recover from its side effects. Furthermore, macroeconomists may use this paper to make more decisive macroeconomic indicators predictions.

This paper is among the pioneer investigations and elaborates on how the agency conflict is resolved effectively. The board and managerial characteristics and different forms of ownership might be applicable to provide cheaper funds for companies listed in emerging markets suffering from weak external corporate governance combinations.

This study aims to outline the research field of initial public offerings (IPOs) pricing and performance by combining bibliometric analysis with a systematic literature review process.

The study uses over three decades of IPO publication records (1989–2020) from Scopus and Web of Science databases. An analysis of keyword co-occurrence and bibliometric coupling was used to gain insights into the evolution of IPO literature.

The study categorized the IPO research field into four primary clusters: IPO pricing and short-run behaviour, IPO performance and influence of intermediaries, venture capital financing and top management and political affiliations and litigation risks. The results offer a framework for delineating research advancements at different stages of IPOs and illustrate the growing interest of researchers in IPOs in recent years. The study identified future research potential in the areas of corporate governance, earning management and investor sentiments related to IPO performance. Similarly, the study highlighted the opportunity to test multiple theoretical frameworks on alternative investment platforms (SME IPO platforms) operating under distinct regulatory environments.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper represents the first instance of using both bibliometric and systematic review to quantitatively and qualitatively review the articles published in the area of IPO pricing and performance from 1989 to 2020.

The purpose of this study is to analyse and compile the literature on various option pricing models (OPM) or methodologies. The report highlights the gaps in the existing literature review and builds recommendations for potential scholars interested in the subject area.

In this study, the researchers used a systematic literature review procedure to collect data from Scopus. Bibliometric and structured network analyses were used to examine the bibliometric properties of 864 research documents.

As per the findings of the study, publication in the field has been increasing at a rate of 6% on average. This study also includes a list of the most influential and productive researchers, frequently used keywords and primary publications in this subject area. In particular, Thematic map and Sankey’s diagram for conceptual structure and for intellectual structure co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling were used.

Based on the conclusion presented in this paper, there are several potential implications for research, practice and society.

This study provides useful insights for future research in the area of OPM in financial derivatives. Researchers can focus on impactful authors, significant work and productive countries and identify potential collaborators. The study also highlights the commonly used OPMs and emerging themes like machine learning and deep neural network models, which can inform practitioners about new developments in the field and guide the development of new models to address existing limitations.

The accurate pricing of financial derivatives has significant implications for society, as it can impact the stability of financial markets and the wider economy. The findings of this study, which identify the most commonly used OPMs and emerging themes, can help improve the accuracy of pricing and risk management in the financial derivatives sector, which can ultimately benefit society as a whole.

It is possibly the initial effort to consolidate the literature on calibration on option price by evaluating and analysing alternative OPM applied by researchers to guide future research in the right direction.