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The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of earnings management (EM) and tax aggressiveness (TA) on shareholder wealth and on stock price crash risk (SPCR) of German companies.

The sample comprises 820 firm-year observations of 188 non-financial companies listed on German stock exchanges from 2008 to 2014. The authors apply generalized least square panel regression to overcome autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity problems.

EM and TA are not related in terms of affecting shareholder wealth and SPCR. EM has no impact on shareholder wealth but significantly affects SPCR. TA has a significant positive effect on shareholder wealth but no impact on SPCR. Thus, EM practices applied within German companies are non-opportunistic, as they do not affect shareholder wealth and decrease SPCR. TA practices are also non-opportunistic, as they increase shareholder wealth and do not affect SPCR.

This study provides insights that can improve managers’ accounting choices (EM vs TA) and alleviate investor concerns about the effect of managers’ manipulation strategies. Considering other variables affecting TA, such as discretionary book tax differences, may add further insights into this discussion. The analysis of and comparison with other markets may shed more light on the validity and generalizability of the results.

This study recommends that investors must take into consideration the accounting variables to ensure better investment decisions and highlight the importance of CEO choices on market reaction.

The investigation of the mutual impact of EM and TA on shareholder wealth and SPCR is novel, and so too is the analysis of whether EM and TA are complementary or substitute for each other in this relationship.

This paper aims to examine the impact of CEO (chief executive officer) compensation and CEO attributes on the level of tax aggressiveness of French companies.

The sample comprises 180 firm-year observations of 40 companies listed on the CAC 40 during the period ranging from 2008 to 2018. For the purpose of overcoming the problems of heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation, the authors apply the generalized least square panel regression.

This study’s results corroborate the importance of CEO compensation and CEO attributes as determinants of tax aggressiveness. In addition, the authors come up with the fact that CEO compensation has a negative effect on tax aggressiveness, and that older CEOs and CEOs with accounting expertise are negatively linked with tax aggressiveness. The authors also find out that there is a positive relationship between the CEO tenure and tax aggressiveness. Moreover, the authors report that foreign CEOs are more likely to engage in tax aggressiveness practices than local CEOs.

The unavailability of all annual reports and the use of only one proxy to measure tax aggressiveness present limitations. This study shows significant implications for shareholders, regulators and researchers. As a matter of fact, shareholders will observe the effect of appointing a foreign CEO on the tax aggressiveness level. This study may also provide regulators with new ideas regarding the role of the CEO and its impact on aggressive decision-making. And it brings forth new insight for researchers through adding a foreign CEO as a new determinant of tax aggressiveness.

According to the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to provide empirical evidence regarding the effect of both CEO compensation and CEO attributes on tax aggressiveness. It also looks into the impact of a foreign CEO on tax aggressiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of corporate governance structure and CEO compensation on the level of tax aggressiveness.

This work analyzes a sample of 471 observations of 100 companies listed on the NASDAQ 100 for the period 2008-2012. It uses a fixed-effect panel model to analyze the effect of different model variables on the tax aggressiveness level.

The main finding of this study is the great influence of corporate governance structure and CEO compensation on reducing tax aggressiveness. Indeed, it finds a significant negative relation between board size, CEO salary, CEO stock options and tax aggressiveness. In addition, the study reveals that there is a direct negative relation between CEO duality, tax fees and tax aggressiveness.

The study was conducted using robust methods to test the effect of corporate governance structure and CEO compensation on tax aggressiveness level. The generalized least squares method was used to fit panel data and overcome heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation problems. The aim of the study was to prove the great effect of both corporate governance structure and CEO compensation on reducing tax aggressiveness. As this study was based on data from American companies, the results cannot be generalized to all contexts.

This paper differs from previous work and tests the effect of corporate governance structure, CEO compensation, CEO characteristics and audit fees on tax aggressiveness. The findings of this study will enrich the literature on tax aggressiveness by suggesting that corporate governance structure and CEO compensation can significantly limit tax aggressiveness behavior. Therefore, shareholders must be aware of these two variables. They need to limit tax aggressiveness behavior, as it is usually accompanied by rent diversion, as reported by Desai and Dharmapala (2006). Therefore, these findings will be helpful to investors, managers and regulators because they have implications for the interactive decision-making process.

The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of board effectiveness (BE) on financial performance and operational risk (OR) disclosure and the interaction effect of a bank’s Sharia Supervisory Board quality (SSB) with religious and ethical principles.

The data were collected from the annual financial reports of 25 Islamic banks (IBs) in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries over 2008-2017. The OR disclosure, the SSB quality and BE were measured using self-developed indices. The Tawhidi string relation methodology was used to establish the circular causal model. The moderating effect of the SSB quality on the performance, OR disclosure and board structure relationship was examined using the hierarchical regression analysis.

The main finding of this study is related to the positive moderating effect of SSB quality on the relationship between performance, OR disclosure and BE. This result seems to indicate that at a high level of SSB quality, even when the performance increase the IBs engage in complying with OR disclosure to inform the stakeholders on the real situation of the bank.

The finding of this research would be of great support to stakeholders and policymakers to make more pressure on IBs to improve the quality of their SSB structure and show more compliance with the governance recommendations. As an extension to this research, further study can examine other Islamic governance mechanisms such as Sharīʿah-compliant banks.

The present study provides a new addition to the prior literature by investigating the relationship between performance, BE, OR disclosure and the interaction effect of SSB quality. From an Islamic ethical, this research can also contribute to the growing discussion on SSB quality and performance.

This paper aims to examine the effect of contractual factors and noncontractual factors on tax avoidance (TA).

The sample comprises 400 firm-year observations of 67 companies listed on the HDAX during the period 2008–2017. The generalized least square panel regression is applied.

The study results confirm a significant effect of long-term chief executive officer (CEO) compensation incentives and CEO attributes on TA. Findings exhibit a significant impact of foreign CEO on TA, whereas an insider CEO mitigates TA. The results hold for several robustness tests, with lag effective tax rate as dependent variable and with splitting foreign CEO into European and non-European origin.

First, the sample is limited to 400 firm-year observations and to the German context. For shareholders, the study provides first evidence on relationships between the geographical and internal versus external labor market for CEOs and TA. For researchers, the findings underline the importance of integrating behavioral approaches like place attachment theory and the rooting theory in the theory of TA.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the impact of both contractual determinants and behavioral determinants on TA in the German context as an emerged economy with a dualistic corporate governance. This study contributes to the existing literature regarding the scientific debates about the impact of CEOs and CEO attributes on TA. It also analyses the balance between the place attachment theory and the rooting theory in the face of the compensation outcomes of agency theory.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the motivations of earnings management and financial aggressiveness levels in the big 100 companies listed on the NASDAQ 100 after the 2007 financial crisis.

This paper uses two samples. The first contains 471 observations of 100 companies listed on the NASDAQ 100 for the period 2008-2012 and is used to examine the motivations of earnings management. The second represents 282 observations of companies listed on the NASDAQ 100 that use financial aggressiveness. The authors use a panel data model to analyze the effects of four explanatory variables (corporate governance structure, CEO compensation, CEO characteristics and audit fees) on both earnings management and financial aggressiveness levels.

The results of the investigation show the significant impact of corporate governance structure, CEO compensation, CEO characteristics and audit fees on reducing the earnings management and financial aggressiveness levels.

The findings can be valuable to both investors and researchers. For researchers, the present work may help in explaining the motivations of earnings management and financial aggressiveness practices used by large American firms after the 2007 US financial crisis. For investors, this study serves to highlight the critical importance of corporate governance, CEO compensation and CEO characteristics in limiting such behaviors. Thus, investors are recommended to account for such variables in order to make effective investment decisions. As an extension to this study, researchers might consider other CEO psychological variables. Other market indices could also be considered in order to generalize and validate the results of the research.

Investors must take into consideration the corporate governance structure and ask for supplementary information about CEO characteristics to ensure better investment decisions.

In this paper, and in contrast to previous research, the authors test the impact of corporate governance structure, CEO compensation, CEO characteristics and audit fees together on the level of both earnings management and financial aggressiveness behavior for large US non-financial firms after the 2007 financial crisis. The authors show that older CEOs use less earnings management and financial aggressiveness. The findings can be valuable to investors, managers and regulators because they have implications for their interactive decision-making process.