This paper aims at finding out the quality of environmental reporting and its association with company characteristics considering listed companies from various sectors through the lens of legitimacy theory and stakeholder theory in Bangladesh. Design/ Methodology/ Approach: Secondary data relevant to company characteristics and environmental disclosure have been collected from various parts of the annual reports of firms for the year 2016. This study considers one dependent variable breaking down into three levels and four independent variables. Level of environmental disclosure (LED) is the dependent variable while size, profitability, leverage and industry type are independent variables. Research finding: By employing Ordinary Least Square (OLS), the level of environmental disclosures (LED-1) is significantly associated with firm size, unlike the profitability, leverage and production attributes. The moderate disclosure level (LED-2) is likely to be affected by the firm size, unlike the other factors. Furthermore, the greatest disclosure level (LED-3) is to be strongly affected by business size and profitability. Moreover, the study confirms that firm type has no impact on environmental disclosure. Theoretical contribution/ Originality: This paper provides insights into the quality of environmental disclosure of Bangladeshi companies. It reveals that only leverage and size affect the total environmental disclosure of firms, unlike type and other features. This has a perfect alignment with the legitimacy theory that larger firms tend to disclose more to legitimise their activities and scale up their image. Practitioner/ Policy implication: This paper helps firms in implementing environmental disclosure policies and make them more environmentally responsible. Limitation/ Implication: Exploring the qualitative environmental disclosures among various types of industries in Bangladesh in a longitudinal manner by addressing more control variables may contribute to future research on determinants of corporate environmental reporting.

This study investigates the impact of board incentives as proxied by directors` remuneration on the financial performance of listed textile companies in Bangladesh. Using Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) and data pertaining to listed textile companies of Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) during the period from 2011 to 2017 (resulting in a total of 140 firm-year observations), we have estimated the firm performance equation involving directors' remuneration and board independence as the independent variables and some other control variables like firm age, size, leverage, and operating efficiency. The results reveal that there is a negative association between board remuneration and firm performance. In addition, this study finds no significant relationship between board independence and firm performance of the sample firms. Our findings suggest that higher pay to the board does not stimulate higher firm performance and, in turn, results in shareholders getting nothing in return from this and, hence, is a matter of great concern for them. Moreover, our results indirectly indicate that currently directors` remuneration in Bangladesh is not aligned with the firm performance, which has been emphasized in extant corporate governance literature. Besides, this paper further raises questions about the effectiveness of independent directors in the boards of textile firms in Bangladesh.

PurposeDue to large amounts of coal burning, huge carbon dioxide emission and poor environmental quality, it is important to identify whether environmental Kuznets curve exists in China and India since in downward period of environmental Kuznets curve, economic growth in these countries will largely contribute to world environmental quality. Further, it helps to make a comparative analysis between China and India on how economic growth will contribute to the environmental quality in both upward and downward period of environmental Kuznets curve due to energy consumption.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses the data of carbon dioxide emission, per capita GDP and energy consumption from 1972 to 2017 to identify individual and panel-level environmental Kuznets curve of China and India. Before going to regression and causality analysis, unit root and cointegration tests are performed.FindingsThis study finds the existence of environmental Kuznets curve in China and India at both individual and panel level. Further, due to high energy consumption, environmental quality in China will deteriorate at a lower rate in the long run than that of India. Next, the increase in economic growth or per capita GDP in the long run will deteriorate environmental quality at a lower rate in China than that of India. Besides, with the zero level of energy consumption and per capita GDP, the environmental quality of China will be worse than that of India. However, increase in per capita GDP after threshold level will improve environmental quality in India at a higher rate than that of China.Research limitations/implicationsIt helps to formalize the comparative relationship between the two large Asian economies by knowing the influence of economic growth on environmental degradation due to energy consumption. However, this study cannot conclude exactly when China and India can avail the downturn in environmental Kuznets curve.Originality/valueIt firstly establishes a link among energy consumption, economic growth and environmental quality between China and India including comparative pace in both upward and downward period of environmental Kuznets curve.

This study attempts to evaluate the profitability for a panel of 29 listed commercial banks of Bangladesh. Panel GMM approach along with Pooled OLS and Random Effect OLS has been applied to discover the impact of key factors namely investment in government securities and shares, loan and advances, human resource, efficiency, and economy money supply growth on profitability using the data set from 2005-2015 for each bank. The study has found that loan and advances, human resource, efficiency, and economy money supply growth have significant positive impact on profit where investment in government securities and shares has significant negative impact. Therefore, more loan and advances, more human resource, more efficiency, and more money supply growth unlike investment in government securities and shares will eventually boost up the profitability of banks.

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