This thesis investigates the neutrality and formality of accounting as a form of intervention in situations of conflict faced by Nongovernmental Organisations (NGOs). In this thesis, neutrality and formality of accounting are limited to evaluation devices and formats used by donors to assess NGOs, specifically the Logical Framework (LF). Technical attributes and views were desirable for making sense of evaluator experiences in development projects in the 1960s. Responding to this, contractors under the United States International Development Agency (USAID) combined scientific and management approaches and created the LF (Chapter 2). Many development agencies since then have required NGOs to use an LF within project proposals and as a basis to monitor and evaluate project performance. At the same time, the neutrality and formality of the LF have been widely criticised in development circles. This thesis found, however, that in situations where conflict is prevalent, neutrality and formality play a role in shaping, informing and structuring conflict. To understand ways in which conflict and technicality intersect, this thesis is based on a case study of a grassroots NGO in Sri Lanka, Sarvodaya. This thesis identifies and discusses conflict between donors and the NGO, conflict as part of society and conflict between actors within an NGO project. Contrary to previous literature in accounting, neutrality and formality in Sarvodaya were found to be a malleable resource for mobilisation in conflict situations. Neutrality and formality of evaluation devices, mainly the LF, were used in Sarvodaya as a way to strategize around sources of conflict between external donors and internal NGO accounts in the late 1980s (Chapter 4). Later, after the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, the LF was used to work on projects focused on reconciliation and reconstruction. Neutrality and formality of the LF helped to transform social conflicts into manageable projects in Sarvodaya (Chapter 5). Lastly, this thesis proposes a framing of ‘sights’ – plain sight, oversight and foresight - to explore the ways in which neutrality and formality provide a visual methodology for staff to make sense of their daily work, accountability and visions of the future (Chapter 6).

It is well known that tax administration can be subject to an influence of political power, and bad tax administration may lead to an efficiency loss. However, both the extent and the mechanisms of the political intervention and the efficiency loss are still not fully understood in empirical works. Using the Chinese Annual Survey of Manufacturing Firms, digitized data on the turnover of prefectural secretaries of the Chinese Communist Party, and the County Public Finance Statistics Yearbook in China from the year 2000 to 2007, the three chapters in this Ph.D. thesis aim to contribute to our understanding of following three questions: 1. How do local government incentives affect tax enforcement and effective tax rate of VAT? 2. What is the role of local politicians in selective tax enforcement across industries? 3. To what extent does the dispersion in the effective VAT rate across firms lead to production efficiency loss via the channel of resource misallocation? The results suggest that: 1. Weak local government incentives, rather than lack of information on tax base, lead to a low effective VAT rate in China. 2. There is an increasing favouritism in tax enforcement towards capital-intensive industries as the prefectural secretaries of the Chinese Communist Party stay longer in office. On the contrary, labour-intensive industries face tougher tax enforcement. 3. A tax-neutral reform which eliminates the dispersion in VAT rates across firms in the same 4-digit industry produces a gain in aggregate TFP in the order of 7.9% of GDP on average in the period from 2000 to 2007.

Most developing countries are dependent on external borrowing to achieve economic growth. However, external borrowing requires fixed payments independent of the actual return on the invested funds. If a country either invests the money inefficiently or is subject to unexpected difficulties, it may not be able to meet contracted service payments. Potential debt servicing problems have existed for many years, and recently, the actual occurrence of service interruptions has become more frequent. Despite the difficulty of servicing debt, it is optimal, in an economic sense, for selected Arab countries to borrow from abroad. Foreign capital goods are usually scarce in the selected countries, so their productivity is relatively high. External borrowing allows more imports of capital without forcing down consumption. As long as the productivity of the capital exceeds its cost, debt servicing problems should not arise. A study of three Arab countries indicates that, real GDP growth can be increased through external borrowing. However, a higher level of debt raises the likelihood of debt servicing difficulties. Even when the use of debt is efficient, a heavier debt burden makes these selected Arab countries more susceptible to unexpected shocks. However, if GDP growth is not overly ambitious, the debt servicing burden stabilizes and may eventually begin to decline. The greatest danger arises when future debt servicing requirements are ignored. A sharp increase in external debt may allow high GDP growth in the short run, but eventually the resulting debt service will become unsustainable. This study therefore, examines the impact of external debt on economic growth and external debt service on investment in three Arab countries from the middle income group in North Africa over the period 1982-2005. This study employs developed Chowdhury growth and investment models to determine the impact of external debt on economic growth during the period after the debt crisis. Moreover, a single equation model is inappropriate to analyze the relationship between external loans, economic growth, debt servicing and investment due to there being a circular relationship among them and other macroeconomic variables. Therefore, if only the output equation or investment equation are estimated, this is likely to understate the impact of external debt on economic growth. In addition, the relationship between external debt, investment and economic growth is not a simple one for a number of reasons. Firstly, the relationship between external debt, debt servicing, investment and economic growth, both indirectly and directly, must be viewed in terms of their impact on domestic savings and exports. Secondly, a complex relationship exists between external debt servicing and economic growth. Therefore, this study uses two equations to investigate the impact of external debt on economic growth and external debt service on investment in three Arab countries (Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco) using a macro econometric model estimated for the period 1982-2005. The empirical findings reveal that external debt does not affect growth directly. The results indicate that external debt affects investment positively and is statistically significantly indicating external debt in selected countries encourages investment rather than depresses it. The findings of this research are consistent with the economic theory that external loans stimulate economic growth in less developed countries. Therefore, investment plays a very important role in the growth of selected Arab countries‟ economies. Furthermore, the result also confirms that there is no sign of a crowding out effect through which external debt service is hypothesized to affect investment. The important finding that external debt tends to have a relationship with investment and growth suggests that relying on external debt to enhance economic growth is a good policy. In addition, these countries need to supplement their lack of domestic saving with external loans and other forms of foreign capital such as foreign direct investment.

Libya has an economy over dependent on hydrocarbon and the petroleum industry. In a bid to diversify, the Libyan government is looking at Free Economic Zones (FEZ) as a viable option versus other avenues, like Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). This thesis explores FEZ as a tool to fetch investment for the development of Libya's economy. Some of the factors in favour of FEZ are believed to be employment opportunities for local labour, enhancing their skills and knowledge, as well as bringing new technology along with management styles, thereby boosting not only the national economy, but overall growth of society. This thesis examines these arguments by comparing existing FEZ in various parts of the world, particularly Al-Ameria FEZ in Alexandria, Egypt. The case study revolves around this FEZ, as it has geographical and cultural similarity to that of Libya. In stimulating a potential decision making process, cost-benefit analysis is carried out to evaluate financial return against benefits envisaged. Finally, the study recommends the perceived best way forward in establishing successful FEZ to achieve desired sustainable economic growth in Libya. This is the first study of its kind in the Arab world that covers cost-benefit analysis of different industries within FEZ, and could prove to be a guideline for academics and business communities working in this field.

This thesis empirically examined conditional four-moment CAPM and APT pre-specified macroeconomic variables with market liquidity in four Arab stock markets, namely Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Kuwait over a period extended from January 1998 to December 2009. The desire to test these models in the Arab stock market was motivated by that fact that stock returns in these markets do not follow normal distribution and there exist third and fourth moments (skewness and kurtosis). More than 50% of the realised returns from the Arab stock market are lower than the risk free return, meaning the realised return is negative. Arab countries are different in terms of their economic situation and many have carried out economic reform programmes. In addition, their stock markets have been affected by multiple political and economic shocks. Arab stock markets are characterised by a low number of listed companies, low trading volume, low value of market capitalisation, and hence low market liquidity. Examination of the conditional four-moment CAPM was performed using panel data regression, whereas APT pre-specified macroeconomic variables with market liquidity by using six macroeconomic variables: industrial production, inflation, money supply, interest rate, exchange rate and oil price, panel data regression and Principal Components Analysis (PCA). The results of unconditional two-, three- and four-moment CAPM showed that there was not a significant positive relationship between beta and co-kurtosis, and return and that there was an insignificant relationship between co-skewness and return which was opposite to sign of market skewness in all stock markets included in the sample. However, the results of testing conditional two-, three- and four-moment CAPM showed a significant positive (negative) relationship between beta and return in an up (down) market in all the stock markets included in the sample. The results of conditional three- and four-moment CAPM showed a significant negative (positive) relationship between co-skewness and return when the market was up (down) in Jordan and Tunisia. Based on the results of conditional four-moment CAPM, a positive (negative) relationship between co-kurtosis and return in up (down) markets was found in Tunisia only when using a value weighted index (VWI). The results of panel data regression and PCA revealed that the most important macroeconomic variables that remain significant in explaining stock returns were oil price for Jordan and exchange rate and oil price for Kuwait. With respect to market liquidity, the results showed a significant negative relationship between market liquidity and stock returns in both Jordan and Kuwait. Generally, empirical results showed that the most important variable to explain the cross-section of stock returns is conditional co-variance (conditional beta), whereas the importance of others variables (co-skewness, co-kurtosis, macroeconomic variables and market liquidity) were different from market to other.

This thesis examines macroeconomic and company specific factors that determines the long-term growth rate of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). The study employs quarterly panel data of 229 US REITs for the period of 199201 to 201104 resulting in 7,140 observations. The analysis applies the firm fixed effects estimator and variance decompositions. The long-term growth rate is found to be positively related to inflation, valuation effects, performance and size; and negatively related to economic growth and profitability. The study identifies economic growth (among macroeconomic factors) and size (among company specific factors) the most important influences on the long-term growth rate of US REITs. The study further provides information that the market determined an average long-term growth of 0.4% on a quarterly basis in the period under observation.

Libya is an emerging market in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Early efforts to encourage financial market development in the 1990s were re-energised after the lifting of UN sanctions in 2003 following dramatic changes in the Libyan financial market. One of these critical decisions was the establishment of the Libyan stock market in 2006. This thesis attempts to explore the challenges that may face the Libyan stock market by examining the barriers which affect the development of the Libyan stock market. In this endeavour the researcher develops a best practice model to help the Libyan stock market achieve its ambitions. The aim of this thesis is to fill the gap in academic research on MENA financial market by investigating the role of ten selected factors on the development of the Libyan stock market. In this thesis, trust is introduced as a major moderator of the ten selected factors under study. Although, there are many examples in the literature of how to understand and interpret trust and, in particular, behavioural economics, transaction cost economy and more general social process theory leads to different understandings of the concept of trust. In this thesis it is argued that the concept of transaction cost economy allied with social process theory provide useful insights. In order to explore and understand the situation of the Libyan stock market as a human construct; and the factors which may affect Libya and its stock market development, the interpretive accounting research (IAR) appears to be the most suitable paradigm for this research. Thus this study uses qualitative methods and mainly semi-structured interviews.

Financial reporting should provide decision makers with useful information. One qualitative characteristic of useful information is its classificatory value. Prior studies in accounting, economics and finance provide evidence that balance sheet and income statement ratios can be utilised to classify economic events such as mergers and bankruptcy which are of interest to decision makers. This research examines the financial profile of U.K. firms acquired during the period 1980-1986. It also investigates whether the profile of financial characteristics of the observed firms provides a useful criterion for identifying those firms with a high probability of subsequently being acquired. The use of funds flow measures in the analysis contributes to the classification accuracy of the models when one year data was employed. Although this has been applied to bankruptcy predictions, its contribution has not been tested in any previous U.K. merger studies. The results for the univariate analysis indicate that the acquired firms during the period 1980-1986 have low profitability, high gearing ratios, low liquidity and low valuation ratios when compared with the non-acquired firms. The multivariate analysis indicates the usefulness of accounting information in merger classification when the most recent data is used. It also suggests the existence of different attributes that are important in the acquisition classification model. It provides a strong indication throughout the different stages of the analysis that the asset undervaluation hypothesis and the profitability hypothesis are the most important discriminators and not the size hypothesis as had previously been assumed.

This thesis consists of three essays analysing corporate governance (CG) reforms in emerging economies, with a particular focus on Oman. The three essays focus on three closely related CG topics that quantitatively examine the extent to which Omani CG reforms have been effective in enhancing three main corporate policy decisions. In the first essay, the thesis investigates the level and determinants of voluntary CG compliance and disclosure. The central objective of this essay is to empirically examine two main research questions: First, what is the level of voluntary compliance with, and disclosure of, CG rules contained in the 2002 Omani CG Code for listed firms?; Secondly, what factors determine the level of voluntary compliance with, and disclosure of, CG recommendations contained in the 2002 Omani CG Code for listed firms? Exploring these questions has the capacity of improving current understanding of firms’ willingness to voluntarily engage in and disclose more transparent information about their CG practices. The findings indicate that Omani firms have responded positively to the 2002 CG Code’s best practice recommendations. Relying on insights from agency, legitimacy, resource dependence and signalling/stakeholder theories, the findings also suggest that ownership structure and board characteristics have significant impact on firm-level voluntary CG disclosure. Specifically, the findings suggest that government ownership, institutional ownership and foreign ownership, board size, the presence of a CG committee, and board diversity on the basis of nationality are positively related to the level of CG compliance and disclosure, whereas block ownership and board diversity on the basis of gender are negatively associated with the level of CG compliance and disclosure. The second essay investigates how effective the CG measures contained in the 2002 Omani voluntary CG Code and other CG mechanisms proposed by other laws, such as the Companies Law, mitigate agency problems associated with capital structure (CS) decisions. The main purpose of this essay is to empirically examine the extent to which firm-level CG quality, ownership structure and board/audit characteristics influence capital structure, as well as the corporate decision (choice) to issue equity or debt in seasoned equity offerings (SEOs). This examination has the ability to expand current understanding of Omani firms’ capital structure decisions and the role that CG mechanisms can play with respect to this corporate decision. Informed by insights from tax-driven (e.g., Modigliani-Miller capital structure irrelevance and trade-off) and non-tax-driven (e.g., agency, market timing, pecking order, and signalling) capital structure theories, the empirical evidence reveals that CG is a significant determinant of capital structure decisions and SEOs. First,the findings suggest that CG index, government ownership, institutional ownership, foreign ownership, board size, audit firm size and CG committee are negatively related to capital structure, whereas block ownership is positively associated with capital structure. Second, the results indicate that firms with better governance structures, more institutional ownership and audited by big four are more likely to raise additional financing through SEOs. By contrast, firms with poor CG mechanisms, more government ownership more, foreign ownership, block ownership, large boards, and CG committee are less likely to raise additional financing through SEOs. The final essay investigates the extent to which a broad composite CG index, corporate ownership structure, and board/audit characteristics can explain observable changes in firm-level earnings management (EM). The key objective of this essay is to investigate how effective the CG recommendations contained in the 2002 Omani CG Code and other CG mechanisms proposed by other laws, such as the Companies Law, constrain earnings management practices. The result has the potential of deepening current understanding of the ability of different CG measures to mitigate agency problems and reduce agency costs associated with earnings management. Utilising insights from agency, stakeholder, stewardship and signalling theories, the study finds that firms with better governance structures, government ownership, institutional ownership, foreign ownership, audited by big four and CG committee are negatively related to earnings management. In contrast, firms with poor CG mechanisms, more block ownership, larger boards, and CG committee are positively associated with earnings management. The reported empirical findings of the three essays are fairly robust across a number of econometric models and estimations that take into account alternative variables and potential endogeneity problems. In brief, given the dearth of empirical evidence on the nature of CG’s influence on these three corporate policy decisions in emerging economies in particular, this thesis seeks to contribute to the literature by providing new insights with specific focus on CG reforms that have been pursued in Oman. Specifically, this thesis contributes to the limited, but steadily growing body of literature on the effectiveness of CG mechanisms in influencing a number of crucial managerial decisions, including voluntary disclosure, financing and earnings management, in emerging economies.

This study extends evidence on the efficiency of stock markets in developing countries using data from the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE). Previous evidence from studies on stock markets in developing countries, and NSE in particular, is inconclusive. In many cases, the findings have not supported the random walk hypothesis and are therefore not consistent with efficiency in the weak-form. The key question investigated is whether successive share price returns on the Nairobi Stock Exchange are independent random variables so that price returns cannot be predicted from historical price returns. This study uses the traditional random walk methodology of serial correlation and runs tests as applied by Fama (1965), Cooper (1982), and Taylor (1986) rather than the newer methodologies of variance ratios [Lo and MacKinlay (1988)] and of regression [Jegadeesh (1990)]. These techniques are used for reasons of triangulation in research and for their intuitive appeal. They remain appropriate tools for testing the weak-form EMH despite challenge from newer methodologies. In their use, nevertheless, the study recognises and deals with two largely ignored issues in their application to EMH tests in emerging markets: the quality and quantity of data, and the depth of analysis of the market microstructure. The quality and quantity of data are improved through the creation of a computer database. The study then analyses all three price series on the exchange: The Bid, Ask and Transaction prices. The findings suggests that with proper control over the quality of the data and the use of a larger number of data observations, the random walk model can be a good description of successive price returns in an emerging stock market. This has been shown to hold irrespective of whether bid, ask, or transaction returns are used. This is contrary to most of the earlier evidence that the random walk model does not apply in such markets. The results obtained are therefore consistent with the weak-form of the EMH.