AbstractsDividend Policy is among the widely addressed topics in modern financial literature. The inconclusiveness of the theories on importance of dividend in determining firm's value has made it one of the most debatable topics for the researchers (see for example, Ramcharan, 2001;Frankfurter et. al 2002;Al-Malkawi, 2007). The present study investigates the impact of firm specific characteristics on corporate dividend behavior in emerging economy of Pakistan. Three years data (2005)(2006)(2007) of 100 companies listed at Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) has been analyzed using Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression. The results show that managerial and individual ownership, cash flow sensitivity, size and leverage are negatively whereas, operating cash-flow and profitability are positively related to cash dividend. Managerial ownership, individual ownership, operating cash flow and size are the most significant determinants of dividend behavior whereas, leverage and cash flow sensitivity do not contribute significantly in determining the level of corporate dividend payment in the firms studied in our sample. Estimated results are robust to alternative proxy of dividend behavior i.e. dividend intensity.

Gender diversity and firm performance, is among the new but challenging topics of research in management sciences. Many researchers have studied the role of gender diversity in enhancing firms’ performance in developed economies (see for example, Dwyer et. al, 2003; and Kang et al, 2010). Existing literature on this subject is rare in emerging economies and to the best of author’s knowledge; this is the first study on relationship of gender diversity and firm’s performance in Pakistani context. Present study focuses on the impact of presence of female directors on corporate performance using a sample of 395 listed nonfinancial companies of Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) Pakistan from 2004 to 2009. Estimated results indicate that ratio of female directors is negatively related with firm performance.

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Financial economists believe that the arbitrage forces in the market are the main reason of market efficiency and these forces are the fundamental concept of efficient market hypothesis (EMH). During last few years, various theoretical and empirical evidences have been presented to support the work of financial modeling for the markets with less than rational investors whose trading strategies are based on psychological factors like mood and emotions. Weather condition is among the substantial factors affecting investors' mood and emotions. Present study investigates the impact of temperature on stock market returns in emerging economy of Pakistan. Using the daily temperature records and stock market indices of Karachi and Islamabad, the study has employed auto regressive (AR)-generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model from 2006 to 2010. Based on AR (1)-GARCH (1, 1) estimation the study has found that weather temperatures of both Karachi and Islamabad are negatively related with Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) and Islamabad Stock Exchange (ISE) index returns, respectively.

This paper examines the existence and coincidence of pre‐ and‐post stock price multiple bubbles in Chines and Pakistani capital markets under China Pakistan Economic Corridor regime using generalized supremum augmented Dickey–Fuller (GSADF) test with weekly closing prices for the period 2013–2018 for different market indices of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), Shanghai Stock Exchange, and Shenzhen Stock Exchange. Empirical results depict that multiple stock bubbles exist in PSX at the end of 2016 and as well as in Chinese stock markets in the mid of 2014–2015 and these stock price bubbles are correlated between Pakistan and China. The present study is expected to be pioneer in its nature to apply GSADF for the identification of multiple stock bubbles in emerging stock markets of Pakistan and China which can be further used for comparison of stock bubbles in other regional markets such as BRICS or SAARC regions.