• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.7
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• pp.73-84
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• 2020

Existing studies disagree over the core predictors of firm-level financial choices in developing countries. The general practice only validates the traditional capital structure model, which leads to inconsistency and a lack of novelty. This study removed overfitting issues among existing factors and presented the most reliable and advanced capital structure model in Pakistani firms. The panel data include 368 Pakistani companies from 19 non-financial sectors over the period 2004 to 2017. We apply Akaike and Bayesian Information Criteria to remove overfitting issues among inconsistent proxies in the capital structure model. The fixed effects regression is used for basic results and the Generalized Method of Moments is applied to control the endogeneity. Besides the conventional proxies, we report that credit rating, distance from bankruptcy, managerial concentration, and institutional quality are the most advanced capital structure determinants in Pakistan. These predictors remain significant across firm size and growth levels. Also, the findings confirm that new predictors are reliable to define capital structure dynamics and improve the speed of adjustment in overall and sub-sample analysis. The major findings suggest that managers and policymakers should consider these advanced predictors to design their financial settings in firms.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.8
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• pp.57-66
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• 2021

The outbreak of the financial crisis, the lack of corporate governance practices in Iraqi companies, the high level of earnings management (EM), and weak firm performance (FP) have all encouraged the purpose of this study. This study proposes to achieve the following objectives: (I) to investigate the influence of governance mechanisms on the earnings management practices, (II) to investigate the consequence of EM on FP. The study sample includes 65 Iraqi firms listed on the Iraqi stock exchange for six years from 2012 to 2018, with 390 firm-year observations. The hypotheses were tested using panel data regression. According to the findings, Iraqi companies prefer to use real EM rather than accruals EM to avoid reporting losses. Discretionary cash flow, production costs, and cash flow from operation are examples of actual operations employed to undertake EM. Furthermore, according to the findings of this study, board meeting frequency and female onboard have a significant and negative influence on EM. Besides, the internal audit function was found not to affect EM. On the other hand, results revealed a significant and negative relationship between EM and FP. According to the study, management prefers to minimize cash and accrual expenditure during the economic downturn.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.8
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• pp.75-83
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• 2021

For many years, many academics and practitioners have paid attention to the increasing popularity of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its relationship with financial performance. They have shown that creating social and sustainable responsibility can strengthen the organization's financial performance as the organization can achieve its current needs without compromising the ability to meet future needs. While much theoretical and empirical evidence has been provided to support this argument in developed countries, this topic is under-researched, and the outcomes are controversial in developing countries. Therefore, this paper aims to examine and investigate the relationship between corporate social responsibility and financial performance in Vietnamese organizations. The dataset includes 27 firms listed on the stock market exchanges in Ho Chi Minh city (HOSE) and Hanoi (HNX) from 2015 to 2019. The disclosure approach is adopted to measure corporate social activities; four areas were developed: environment, community, employee and product, customer, and supplier practices. Return on average equity (ROE) and return on average assets (ROA) are two proxies for measuring financial performance. The research results confirm the existing literature with a strong correlation between employees and returns on average assets.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.8
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• pp.487-496
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• 2021

This study examines the environmental performance of firms in Vietnam and its determinants. The contribution of the paper is on both theoretical and empirical aspects. On the theoretical matter, the research proposes a new index measuring environmental management at the firm level, namely the Environmental Management Index with a clear illustration for the case of Vietnam. On the empirical matter, the study points out and estimates determinants of the corporate environmental performance of Vietnamese firms measured by the newly proposed index. Due to data availability and the impossibility of getting more updated data, the empirical analysis covers only the period from 2004-2009. However, findings are still meaningful because, on the one hand, it provides some evidence for Vietnamese policymakers; on the other hand, with the robust methodology proposed, when more recent data are available, researchers can easily replicate the estimation for more insights. Empirical results show that factors having positive impacts on the environmental performance of Vietnamese firms are profit, capital stock, and interestingly public pressure proxied by the population of the province where the firm is located. Firm ownership does also matter in explaining the corporate environmental performance of Vietnam.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.8
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• pp.647-658
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• 2021

Analysts' forecasts are important for providing useful guidance to investors, especially individual or small investors, and therefore it becomes critical to identify the elements which can potentially increase errors in analysts' forecasts. This study investigates potential factors which can lead to errors in forecasting by analysts, specifically in terms of the level and attributes of corporate earnings. Utilizing a sample of firms listed on the Korean stock markets, this study provides evidence that firms with more volatile and unpredictable earnings feature less accurate analyst forecasts. This study fills a void in the literature by conducting empirical tests for earnings attributes in terms of volatility and unpredictability that could potentially undermine the forecast accuracy. The negative association between the quality of earnings and forecast accuracy is more pronounced for firms with negative net income values. Additional analysis demonstrates that forecast accuracy is significantly lower for the fourth quarter than for other fiscal quarters and that fourth quarter earnings tend to be more volatile and unpredictable. This study contributes to the literature by providing new empirical evidence regarding the comprehensive effects of earnings quality and level on analysts' forecasting accuracy and further suggests potential factors contributing to the fourth quarter anomaly in analyst forecasts in terms of earnings attributes.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.8
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• pp.453-463
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• 2021

The current study aims to investigate the relationship between CSRD and firm performance, as an indicator for corporate socially responsible behavior, and corporate market performance of listed companies on the Amman stock exchange (ASE). The study adopts a quantitative methodology and utilizes pooled data sets that was collected following content analysis approach of the annual reports for the period 2014 to 2019. The study sample consists of 42 listed companies. The study ran a multiple regression model in order to capture the relationship between the independent variable CSRD and the dependent variable that is Firm performance which was measured using Tobin's Q. The study also utilized five control variables in order to control the hypothesized relationship between CSRD and Firm Performance. The results indicate a negative but significant relationship between CSRD and corporate market performance measured by Tobin's Q. The results stand against the notion of the business case for CSR, and indicate the opposite position, so, the higher CSRD, the lower will be Tobin's Q. Such results support the notion of the institutional theory, and provide an initial evidence for legitimacy seeking behavior in Jordanian companies. However, the results indicate a lower level of awareness of CSR across investors and market players, which support arguments of the difference in market perceptions towards CSR.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.8
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• pp.533-539
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• 2021

This study aims to consider the role of women serving in the executive committee of the company and determine how it related to corporate social and environmental responsibilities (CSR and ESR). The data was collected from the 344 companies listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) between 2013 and 2014. Especially, the CSR and ESR data was collected from the annual report and used to measure activities related to environmental and social responsibilities of companies listed on the SET. This study employed panel analysis regression to analyze the relationship between dependent and independent variables. The results indicated that the role of women who served in the executive committees of companies listed on SET had a positive impact on the social and environmental responsibilities of companies listed on the SET. The Granger causality test showed that the proportion of women holding positions on the board of directors had a statistically significant relationship with CSR and ESR, which is a unidirectional relationship. Moreover, the size of the company and the return to total assets also have a positive significant relationship with the CSR and ESR.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.895-904
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• 2021

This study aims to investigate the impact of innovation on firm efficiency. Panel data of fourteen finance companies and nine technology companies from 2011 to 2019 on the Vietnam Stock Exchange Market is derived from audited financial statements, annual reports, and other crucial reports that are provided by Vietstock; macroeconomic variables are collected from the World Bank Database. A two-stage approach is used. First, use of the Data Envelopment Analysis methodology to measure firm efficiency. Second, use of the Pooled ordinary least squares, the Fixed effects model, and the Random effects model to investigate the impact of innovation on firm efficiency. Furthermore, the Generalized Method of Moments and the Tobit model are used to validate the impact of innovation on firm efficiency, and the t-test is used to confirm the difference in efficiency with and without the impact of innovation between two industries. The results show that there is a significant impact of innovation on efficiency, and innovation plays a more important in increasing the efficiency of the finance industry than the technology industry. Moreover, the relation between age and efficiency is like the U-shaped, and between size and efficiency is like the inverted U-shaped, whereas efficiency is not associated with inflation.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.169-178
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• 2021

This research aims to test, firstly, how the disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) helps to moderate the effect of family ownership on investment efficiency; secondly, how CSR disclosures mediate the effect of corporate governance on investment efficiency. STATA was used to analyze archival data collected from a total sample of 210 manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX), which were in the family businesses category for the period of 2016-2018. The first finding is that CSR moderates the effect of family ownership on investment efficiency. This implies that family businesses are very careful about investing. They will avoid risky decisions that may increase the economic wealth, but reduce the socio-emotional wealth. To maintain socio-emotional wealth, they tend to choose an underinvestment strategy and are more concerned with the prestige and good reputation of their families and dynasties than with economic wealth. Thus, CSR disclosures can reduce the underinvestment strategy of family businesses listed on the IDX. The second finding is that CSR disclosures are able to mediate the effect of corporate governance on investment efficiency. CSR activities play a major role in decision-making, and through CSR disclosures, corporate governance has a greater effect on investment efficiency.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.289-295
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• 2021

This study investigates the role of corporate governance in the dividend decision of 198 non-financial companies listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange of Sri Lanka, over the period from 2009 to 2016. Four corporate governance indicators are used in this study; managerial ownership, the board size, board independence, and CEO duality. Furthermore, this study considers three control variables such as profitability, firm size, and corporate tax. This study employed the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) model to estimate the regression models on panel data study. The major contribution of this study is exploring the insight into the effect of corporate governance factors on dividend decisions. The results of the study revealed that managerial ownership showed a significant positive impact on the dividend payout ratio. Board size showed a significant positive influence on the dividend payout ratio. Board independence negatively but significantly influenced the dividend payout ratio. CEO duality showed an insignificant negative impact on the dividend payout ratio. In the framework of these CG indicators, Sri Lankan listed firms are recommended to have dispersed ownerships, large Board size and maintain a balance of power and authority by separating the individual who is assuming the position of the CEO from the Chairperson of the Board and maintain at least two independent directors.