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This paper investigates empirically the effect of board ownership on firm performance in Bangladesh. By estimating single equation and simultaneous equation models on an unbalanced pooled sample of listed firms, it offers some new insight into the ownership-performance link in Bangladesh. Building on extant literature, it examines the ownership-performance relationship in an emerging market economy considering ownership as exogenous and as endogenous. The latter approach is favoured as recent empirical evidence shows that ownership and performance are endogenously determined and there is either a reverse-way or two-way causality relationship between the two. While OLS regression analysis indicates a linear and non-linear relationship between board ownership and performance, this disappears when 2-SLS estimation of a simultaneous equation model is carried out. Instead, a reverse causality relationship emerges. Other governance and control variables appear to have effects consistent with the literature. These results suggest a need to strengthen the internal control mechanisms within listed firms in Bangladesh. Copyright (c) 2007 The Authors; Journal compilation (c) 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

This study examines the effect of audit quality on earnings management and cost of equity capital of listed companies in India. Our results show that companies employing a high-quality auditor have a lower degree of earnings management and lower cost of equity capital. The results also show that companies belonging to business groups have a lower degree of earnings management and lower cost of equity capital than do stand-alone companies but that they benefit less from employing a high-quality auditor. Our results are based on a large sample of 7,303 firm-year observations on listed companies in India and are robust to alternative measures for our main variablesaudit quality, earnings management, and cost of capitaland to tests for endogeneity and the impact of the global financial crisis (GFC). Given the distinctive and unique institutional features of the Indian market such as the dominant role of family business groups in the national economy, large market share of domestic audit firms, less litigious environment, and less effective professional accounting bodies in checking audit failure, our findings make a significant contribution to the literature on the role of audit quality as a corporate governance monitoring mechanism as reflected in the impact on earnings management and cost of equity capital.

The increasing number and influence of charities in the economy, evidence of mismanagement and the need for information for policymaking are all reasons for establishing charity regulators. Public interest and public choice theories explain charity regulation which aims to increase public trust and confidence in charities (and thus increase voluntarism and philanthropy) and to limit tax benefits to specific organisations and donors. Nevertheless, regulation is resource intensive, and growing pressure on government budgets requires efficiencies to be found. This study proposes regulation differentiated according to charities' main resource providers, to reduce costs and focus regulatory effort, and provides a feasible segmentation.