The paper examines the influence of economic factors namely foreign ownership and trading volume on the value relevance of earnings, book value and cash flows relative to three share price proxies namely average annual share price, annual closing share price and share price after a three-month period following the financial year-end (hereafter ATM-share price), after controlling company's size and leverage for Jordanian services and industrial companies within the period [2004][2005][2006][2007][2008][2009]. Since the paper is the first, as the researcher believes, that examines the influence of foreign ownership and trading volume on the value relevance of earnings, book value and cash flows in an emerging exchange, it aims to provide evidence regarding the influence of these factors on the value relevance of accounting information. The paper found that the value relevance of earnings and book value is greater for companies having foreign ownership and larger trading volume. With the effect of these factors, closing share price shows more response than the other share price proxies. The findings suggest that market participants might be able to extract the firm value via these economic factors. The paper extends the valuation model by including cash flows together with earnings and book value. The findings demonstrate that there is a shift away from earnings towards book value as the basis of firm valuation.

Purpose -The paper aims to examine the influence of financial disclosure (FD) level and time on the value relevance of earnings, book value, and cash flows relative to three share price proxies, namely average annual share price, annual closing share price, and share price after a three-month period following the financial year-end for Jordanian companies. Design/methodology/approach -The paper employs price model to examine the influence of FD level and time on the value relevance of three accounting variables relative to three share price proxies for 91 Jordanian companies (consisting of 5,460 observations) within 2004-2009. Findings -Relative to three share price proxies, the findings proved that FD level and time have a significant influence on the value relevance of book value, but not for cash flows. Also, FD level and time have a significant influence on the value relevance of earnings relative to annual closing share price, while they are not relative to share price after a three-month period following the financial year-end. FD time has a significant influence on the value relevance of earnings relative to the average annual share price. Annual closing share price is the most reliable in indicating value relevance of accounting information. Originality/value -The paper confirms that there is a shift away from earnings towards book value as the basis for firm valuation. Market participants might be able to conclude the firm value through the value relevance of accounting information influenced by company's FD.

This study aims to examine to what extent internal audit effectiveness could be influenced by selected factors namely internal audit scope, internal auditor's experience and senior management's response in the Omani public sector. Employing questionnaire including four sections with 48 questions for responds of 45 managers and 163 employees in Public Authority for Social Insurance (PASI) in the Sultanate of Oman, descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple regressions were employed to examine the relationships among the study's variables. The study found that a significant relationship between internal audit effectiveness and its scope and auditors' experience in the employees' sample while they were insignificant in the managers' sample. Finally, it is found that there is insignificant relationship between internal audit effectiveness and senior management's response. Based on the findings, an awareness has to be maximized on employees to better cooperate with internal audit staff to improve the applications of internal audit standards. Managers are well interested in organization's activities and performance depending on the internal audit findings and observations. The board of directors has to take in its considerations the reasons of these insignificant results if the reasons are not related to the small size of the managers' sample. The study's contribution is to provide evidence regarding the influence of three mentioned factors on the internal audit effectiveness in public sector.

This paper examines the value relevance of earnings and book value of equity (individually and in aggregate), relative to price and return models, for Jordanian industrial companies for the period 1992 to 2002. The main findings of this paper are twofold. First, relative to price model, the value relevance of both earnings and book value (individually) have increased, whilst the value relevance of earnings increased and book value became irrelevant in their combination. Secondly, relative to return model, the value relevance of earnings either individually or in aggregate has increased while that of book value has declined. Overall, it is found that earnings are more important in explaining the variance in share price and return than book value. Furthermore, the results indicate that earnings and book value individually are more value relevant in price model. In contrast, these variables in aggregate are more value relevant in return model. The study shows that earnings help more in explaining market values in Jordanian industrial companies. This paper is the first in using price and return models in one study in Jordan.

The paper investigates the influence of bank capital ratio, size and loans on the profitability of a commercial bank in Jordan. It also evaluates whether returns on Assets (ROA) or returns on equity (ROE) is the better indicator that reflects bank profitability. Two Multiple regression models are used to test the influence of capital ratio, size and loans of a commercial bank on its profitability indicators measured by ROA and ROE and to detect the superiority between the two indicators for 13 Jordanian commercial banks for the period 2005-2013. The results of the study showed that capital ratio, size and loans have insignificant influence on ROA, but not on ROE except bank size. Regarding ROE, significant negative and positive influence for capital ratio and loans respectively are concluded. Although the small number of commercial banks in Jordan and some variables have not been well researched in literature, the paper presents a sight to associate bank performance/profitability proxied by ROA and ROE with its capital ratios, size and loans. Our results might assist bank management to capitalize the factors that could improve banks performance and hedge against the adverse factors.