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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the dynamic relationship between foreign exchange and stock returns. Specifically, the authors examine the impact of the 2008 financial crises on the relation between foreign exchange and stock returns in the MENA region. Design/methodology/approach The authors examine the long-run relation between these two variables using VECM and the authors study the volatility behavior of these two variables using the Dynamic VECH–generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model. The sample covers the MENA region over the period 2004–2015. Findings The results indicate a regime shift in three countries: Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. In addition, the results assert asymmetric relation between stock returns and changes in exchange rates during pre-crisis and post-crisis periods. Modeling the volatility of the foreign exchange and stock return and their covariance using VECH–GARCH suggests that the persistence in volatility is more prominent in the crisis/post-crisis period as compared with the pre-crisis period. Finally, the authors also find more significant results for the persistence parameter in the covariance between stock return and foreign exchange in the crisis/post-crisis period as compared with the pre-crisis period. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the studies by Wong and Li (2010) and Caporale et al. (2014) are the only two that have examined the interaction between stock prices and foreign exchange during the recent financial crisis of 2008. To the authors’ knowledge, none of the previous literature examined the impact of financial 2008 crisis on the relation between foreign exchange and stock prices in the MENA.

PurposeThis study examines the effect of dividend policy on the ex ante probability of stock price crash and the ex ante probability stock price jump.Design/methodology/approachWe use the data of publicly listed non-financial firms from France and the ex ante measures of crash and jump probabilities (based on the Flexible Quadrants Copulas) to test our hypothesis during the period between 1997 and 2019.FindingsOur results show that dividend payments are negatively associated with the ex ante probability of crash and positively associated with the ex ante probability of jump. Our results are robust across various sub-samples and across different proxies of dividend policy. Our findings also hold when we use ex-post measures of crash and jump probabilities.Originality/valueUnlike prior literature, we use ex ante measures of crash and jump probabilities. The main advantage of this forward looking measure is that it allows for more flexibility by modeling the dependence between market returns and stock returns as functions of their actual state. Our measure is also consistent with the behavior of investors and market participants in a way that the market participants do not know the future outcome with certainty, but rather they are anticipating the future.

This paper investigates the impact of ownership structures on firm financial performance in the MENA region.  The sample covers nine MENA countries (Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Tunisia, UAE, Morocco, Oman and Jordan) for the year 2014. We examine the impact of ownership structures on firm performance. Performance is proxied by Tobin-Q, ROE and ROA, while ownership structure is proxied using insider ownership, governmental, and blockholders. We control for risk, size, country effect and industry type. Our results suggest that blockholders, insider ownership and governmental ownership play a crucial role in firm performance measured by Tobin-Q, ROE and ROA respectively. Our results suggest that insider ownership negatively effects firm’s return on equity, while blockholder ownership has a positive impact on a firm’s Tobin-Q. Finally we find that governmental ownership plays a positive role on a firm’s return on assets in the MENA region.

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