Search results

The purpose of this pitch research letter (PRL) is to apply the pitching template developed by Faff (2015) to an academic project on boardroom gender diversity and default risk.

The pitching template helps the pitcher to identify the core elements that form the framework of the research project. The PRL encloses a brief background about the pitcher and pitch, followed by a brief commentary on the pitch and personal reflections of the pitcher on the pitch exercise itself.

One of the best aspects of the pitching template is that it forced the researchers to think each item over and over, enabling a synthesis of scattered ideas in a systematic way. Hence, it is strongly recommend learning and applying the pitching template as a tool to refine embryonic research ideas and to track the progress on the research projects.

This PRL is novel as it highlights the worth of performing the pitching exercise (i.e. quality publication), potential adoptability challenge and solutions (i.e. unfamiliarity and training), systematic process of learning the pitching template and application of the “rule of three” in pitching research. Such reflections are believed to be useful for early career researchers (ECRs).

The authors passively apply a researcher profile pitch (RPP) template tool in accounting and across a range of Business School disciplines.

The authors document a diversity of worked examples of the RPP. Using an auto-ethnographic research design, each showcased researcher reflects on the exercise, highlighting nuanced perspectives drawn from their experience. Collectively, these examples and associated independent narratives allow the authors to identify common themes that provide informative insights to potential users.

First, the RPP tool is helpful for accounting scholars to portray their essential research stream. Moreover, the tool proved universally meaningful and applicable irrespective of research discipline or research experience. Second, it offers a distinct advantage over existing popular research profile platforms, because it demands a focused “less”, that delivers a meaningful “more”. Further, the conciseness of the RPP design makes it readily amenable to iteration and dynamism. Third, the authors have identified specific situations of added value, e.g. initiating research collaborations and academic job market preparation.

The RPP tool can provide the basis for developing a scalable interactive researcher exchange platform.

The authors argue that the RPP tool potentially adds meaningful incremental value relative to existing popular platforms for gaining researcher visibility. This additional value derives from the systematic RPP format, combined with the benefit of easy familiarity and strong emphasis on succinctness. Additionally, the authors argue that the RPP adds a depth of nuanced novel information often not contained in other platforms, e.g. around the dimensions of “data” and “tools”. Further, the RPP gives the researcher a “personality”, most notably through the dimensions of “contribution” and “other considerations”.

The area of law where the principle of transparency is applicable is expanding fast. Also many financial markets have recently become subject to new regulations requiring transparency, such as EU directives MIFID II or Solvency II. Here, what is expanding is not just the applicability of the principle as such, but also the scope of issues which are affected by transparency, that is, remuneration or conflict of interests. In the light of these regulations, it may seem that transparency has simply become a sole legislative measure assuring values such as consumer protection, market stability or – most of all – high-quality governance. Indeed, transparency is thought to contribute to the quality of governance in several different ways, although its implementation must meet certain standards if it is to produce the desired results, especially when it comes to financial institutions. Financial institutions are commonly required to be particularly transparent due to the fact they often act as public trust entities. As the activity of financial institutions is of such importance, the issue of transparency efficiency is worth discussing. Although it is said that the emergence of the principle of transparency in the EU law is a fairly new phenomenon, the existence of transparency obligation is not. Therefore, some doubts may arise as to the question whether the principle of transparency actually adds much to existing rules and principles. In this chapter the author explored and discussed how mandatory transparency affects financial institutions’ activity, and whether it performs its function efficiently.

This study analyzes the relationship between governance and stock liquidity. It uses different variables of corporate board characteristics and test three proxies of a bid-ask spread. It also provides comprehensive and robust evidence for the association between the corporate board and stock liquidity in the pure order-driven Tunisian market.

This study is based on a sample covering all financial firms in Tunisia (banks, insurances and leasing companies) from 2008 to 2019. It employs a panel data approach.

The author finds a negative relationship between board sizes, financial institutional members in corporate board and bid-ask spread (absolute, relative and effective spread). The author suggests that better-managed firms have greatly improved their stock liquidity and lower trading cost. The empirical results reveal that better corporate governance firms improve stock liquidity since it is associated with higher information disclosure.

This research encourages Tunisian firms to develop their governance mechanisms and restructure their board organization to improve stock liquidity. It can support the regulators to simultaneously design appropriate governance recommendations, disclosure policies and trading regulations.

The author presents empirical evidence of the role of corporate board on the bid-ask spread in an emerging market. The research is the first to analyze the corporate board characteristics using seven variables representatives of the board of directors and without using the governance index.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of board gender diversity on bond terms and bondholders’ returns.

The authors perform pooled OLS regression, simultaneous regressions and propensity score matching to a panel data set of bond data for 319 US firms from 2007 to 2014.

The authors find that firms with gender-diverse boards have lower yields, higher ratings, larger issue size and shorter maturity. They also find that bondholders require fewer returns from firms with gender-diverse boards. However, the effect is more pronounced when women, constitutes at least 29.67 percent of the board.

This analysis supplements the findings that board gender diversity is essential for bondholders. It shows that bondholders should look at board gender diversity as a criterion to invest because bonds issued by firms with gender-diverse board have less risk. For practitioners, this study shows that more women participation on boards leads to a reduction in borrowing costs.