Purpose – This paper seeks to examine the impact of ownership structure on firm performance and the default risk of a sample of publicly listed firms. Design/methodology/approach – This paper examines the impact of ownership structure on firm performance and the default risk of a sample of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of financial leverage on firm’s performance in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Additionally, this paper investigates the impact of recent financial crisis on GCC firms. Design/methodology/approach – The authors...

Purpose The risk-return relationship is one of the most widely investigated topics in finance, yet this relationship remains one of the most controversial topics. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the asymmetric volatility and the risk-return tradeoff at the sector level in the...

The number of participants in accounting practices and academia who use English as their second language is significant and growing. Many of them are involved in making ethical judgements based on information provided in English, which is their second language. It is important to know the effect...

This paper explores the relative efficiency of 65 conventional and Islamic banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) over the period from 2002 to 2010. The empirical results suggest that the proposed input variables are significantly related to...

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to conduct a comparative analysis of the long-term operating performance of family and non-family firms from the agency theoretic perspective. The analysis is focused on investigating the impact of family ownership on principal–agent conflicts of...