While the effect of ownership structure on the level of cash holdings has been widely examined, that of government ownership has been understudied. Using a generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation on the panel data of 107 Jordanian firms listed on the Amman Stock Exchange, this research adds to the limited literature on the relationship between government ownership and the level of corporate cash holdings. Consistent with agency theory, the findings reveal that firms with government ownership hold higher levels of cash and that such ownership creates agency problems. Other types of ownership, namely individual, foreign, and block holders, were found to be insignificant. The results provide an important implication for policy makers in Jordan: in order to reduce agency problems associated with government ownership, the government should revise its ownership policy and ensure it specifies clear purposes and expectations of business ownership and how it intends to exercise its rights as owner.

This study offers new insights to help improve our understanding of the impact of female representation on firm performance, as measured by return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) and using non-financial institution data from Jordan. The study utilizes a lagged dependent variable in the regression models by employing the generalized method of moments (GMM) for dynamic panel analysis of the panel data of 77 companies over the period 2008-2018. The results of the regression analysis reveal that leverage, board size, and firm size were positive and statistically significant, while the age of the firm was statistically significant but had a negative effect, which indicates the existence of a relationship between these variables and the performance of Jordanian companies. However, the results fail to show any effect of the impact of female representation on firm performance as measured by return on assets and return on equity. This finding might be attributed to the low representation of females on non financial institution boards, which was only 3.63%, a very low figure compared to that of males on Jordanian boards. Therefore, our results are valid only for Jordanian firms and cannot be generalized to ones in other countries, which might have different cultural and legal perspectives.

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This paper examines the conditional risk-return relationship caused by the impact of using realized returns as a proxy for expected returns, which requires a separation of negative and positive market premiums. Following the methodology of Pettengill et al. (1995), we test the cross sectional relationship between beta and realized returns on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) for ten beta sorted portfolio over the period of January 1993 to December 2016. The empirical results suggest that the traditional two-pass approach produces an insignificant relationship between beta and realized returns in most of the sample period. However, when adjusting for negative market premiums, the results show a significant and consistent relationship for all the testing periods and samples. However, a guaranteed reward for holding extra risk occurred only in the period 2001 –2008, which suggests an assurance of positive risk-return tradeoff during bull markets. JEL Classifications: G11, G12, G15, C21 Asset Pricing, Emerging Markets, Conditional Relationship, Beta, Market Premium

Purpose -COVID-19 is a human and economic tragedy. It has become obvious that the virus pressed hard public finances all over the world. However, countries with relatively limited fiscal space face will experience more pressure. Within this context, this paper has two objectives. First, to outline the status of public finance in Jordan, and in particular, the weight that foreign grants carry in public revenues. Second, to examine the impact of foreign grants on the tax effort in Jordan. In other words, the objective is to examine whether or not public finance in Jordan suffers from the "aid curse". Methodology -The period 1984 -2019 forms the data for the statistical analysis. In addition, and to examine the impact of foreign aid on tax effort, the paper uses time series analysis techniques including stationarity tests, optimal lag length criteria, co-integration, long-run relationship, and variance decomposition analysis. Findings -Based on the empirical results, Jordan does suffer from the curse of aid. Grants do have a negative and significant impact of tax revenues (tax effort). Conclusion -Relevant stakeholders in Jordan should use COVID-19 as a "trigger" point for change in the country's fiscal mobilization process. This is the only way to reduce the growing public debt, and reduce the country's reliance on foreign grants.