This study examines the impact of the chief executive officer's (CEO) ownership, education and origin on firm performance. The study uses balanced panel data for 6 years from 2011 to 2016 to run ordinary least square regression. Three variables that include the CEO origin, education and ownership are investigated in relation to firm performance. These characteristics are some of the basic CEO characteristics that are rarely considered by prior studies. The study uses a sample from firms in the financial sector listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange from 2011 to 2016. The findings indicate that CEO education improves profitability. Similarly, stock performance gets improved when the CEO has prior experience of the firm before being appointed as the chief executive officer. The findings will be useful to shareholders in making an informed decision in selecting the right CEO to manage the firm. Further studies need to consider not only the CEO ownership, but also whether the interest in ownership makes them more powerful.

Tax evasion has been an issue of concern in the Nigerian tax system for decades. Tax evading attitude is argued to have an adverse effect on government's socio-economic and political programs.Many commentators and analyst blamed the situation on the tax authorities, for not living up to expectation with regards to tax administration; others attribute the case to the unpatriotic attitude of the taxpayers. In light of these contending positions, this study therefore, assessed the operation of the informal sector in Bauchi State of Nigeria, where tax evasion assumed to be a normal practice due to high level of informalities in the conduct of businesses within the sector. Primary and secondary data were collected and analyzed. Spearman rank order correlation test was employed to test the relationship between ethics of tax evasion and performance of government and the rho (r) value was fortified in assessing the extent of the relationship. The study findings reveal among other findings that, although its ethical to pay tax but individuals refuse to, due to bad governance and other factors (religious, political and socio cultural) and high level of illiteracy to some extent. It was recommended therefore, a deliberate and more aggressive public enlightenment campaign be embarked upon by the state government on the importance of taxes economically and otherwise.

This study focuses on a nonlinear approach in assessing the effect of free cash flow and managerial ownership on the agency cost of firms listed under the Consumer and Industrial Goods sector in the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE). Based on the extant theories, firms with high free cash flow are more exposed to agency costs. Existing literature however shows that managerial ownership could moderate this tendency. In this study, we argue that the extent to which managerial ownership moderates the effect of free cash flow on firms’ agency costs is dependent upon the level of the ownership, and thus, the moderation effect is not entirely linear. The study therefore empirically investigates whether free cash flow has a significant positive effect on agency costs; whether managerial ownership has a nonlinear effect on free cash flow; and whether the moderating effect of managerial ownership on the association of free cash flow and agency costs is nonlinear (not the same at different levels [Formula: see text]25% and above 25%). We estimate the panel regression using data from 2009 to 2015 to test three main hypotheses. We measured free cash flow using the cash flow approach and adopted the inverse of asset utilization to proxy for agency costs. The findings reveal that while free cash flow linearly and negatively affects agency costs, managerial ownership has a nonlinear effect on free cash flow and on the effect of free cash flow on agency costs. In line with the findings, this study concludes that managerial ownership is not a straight jacket remedy for tacking problems associated with agency costs that results from having excess free cash flow. Further studies should consider other proxies of agency costs.