Corporate Accrual Quality and Cost of Debt: Evidence from Vietnamese Listed Firms in the Construction and Real Estate Industry

The impact of capital structure on corporate outcomes: the moderating roles of financial flexibility and accounting conservatism

This study examines how capital structure influences the financial outcomes of Egyptian listed firms during 2010–2024 and investigates the complementary moderating roles of financial flexibility and accounting conservatism, rather than their joint effect, in shaping the capital structure–performance relationship. Using panel data from 68 non-financial firms on the Egyptian Exchange, the study assesses the direct and interactive effects of leverage (DTA), equity financing (EQA), financial flexibility (proxied by cash holdings) and accounting conservatism on performance measures – ROA, ROE and Tobin’s Q. Fixed effects, system GMM and IV (2SLS/IV-GMM) techniques are applied to address endogeneity and ensure robustness. The results show that leverage negatively affects accounting performance but positively influences market valuation. Financial flexibility and accounting conservatism exhibit complementary and channel-dependent effects: they do not consistently offset the adverse impact of leverage on profitability, while their effects on market valuation are generally positive. This study provides novel evidence from an emerging market that financial flexibility and accounting conservatism play complementary moderating roles in the capital structure–performance relationship, with differential effects across accounting and market outcomes rather than uniform risk mitigation.

Financial Regulatory Intensity and Corporate Liquidity Risk: Evidence from Chinese A-Share Listed Companies

Against the backdrop of escalating financial regulation in China, this study examines how regulatory enforcement intensity affects corporate liquidity risk among A-share listed non-financial firms over 2015–2024. We construct a composite regional regulatory intensity index (Enforce) integrating the frequency and monetary magnitude of administrative penalties issued by local securities regulators and employ firm- and year-fixed-effects panel regressions with the current ratio (CR) as the primary liquidity measure. We find that tighter regulatory enforcement significantly depresses the current ratio, consistent with a compliance-cost channel that constrains short-term debt-servicing capacity. Mediation analysis—conducted separately for each ESG sub-dimension and verified via bootstrap tests—reveals that the corporate governance dimension (G) generates a significant positive indirect effect (consistent partial mediation), the social responsibility dimension (S) generates a significant negative indirect effect (competing partial mediation), and the environmental dimension (E) yields no statistically significant indirect effect. Ownership-type heterogeneity tests confirm that non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) are substantially more sensitive to regulatory tightening than state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Moderation analysis further shows that financial leverage plays a non-monotonic role: the regulation–liquidity effect is negative at low leverage levels and reverses to positive above an estimated threshold (Lev ≈ 0.56). Robustness is established through subsample regressions and a lagged-variable endogeneity test. These findings enrich the institutional finance literature and provide evidence-based guidance for differentiated regulatory policymaking.

Capital adequacy ratio and financial performance in Vietnamese people’s credit funds: The moderating role of board and management gender diversity

This study investigates the determinants of operational efficiency within 904 Vietnamese People’s Credit Funds during the period from 2020 to 2024. Utilizing a robust panel dataset of 4,520 observations, the research employs Fixed Effects Models with Robust standard errors to analyze the nexus between capital adequacy and the return on assets. Empirical results reveal that a higher capital adequacy ratio significantly reduces asset efficiency, which validates the opportunity cost of safety hypothesis in the cooperative banking sector. Furthermore, the debt-to-equity ratio and organizational scale exert negative influences on performance due to heightened administrative burdens and rising oversight costs. Regarding governance, board-level gender diversity exhibits a weak negative correlation with asset returns, while management-level diversity remains statistically insignificant. Notably, the interaction between capital buffers and inflation demonstrates that macroeconomic volatility effectively amplifies the prudential burden of overcapitalization. The research establishes that institutional productivity is primarily driven by internal financial discipline and the optimization of capital reserves rather than by the gender composition of leadership tiers. These findings suggest that the State Bank of Vietnam should adopt a risk-based regulatory framework to prevent the accumulation of excessive idle resources that erode the sustainability of member-owned credit funds.

Effect of board characteristics on real and accrual-based earnings management: Evidence from Vietnamese listed non-financial firms

Type of the article: Research ArticleAbstractFinancial reporting quality is important for maintaining investor confidence, but earnings management remains a persistent concern in developing markets where corporate governance mechanisms are still being strengthened. Vietnam offers a suitable context for this issue because listed firms operate in an environment marked by evolving governance practices, uneven disclosure quality, and concentrated ownership structures. This study examines whether board quality helps limit real earnings management (REM) and accrual-based earnings management (AEM) among Vietnamese non-financial listed firms. The dataset includes 3,697 firm-year observations for companies listed on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange and the Hanoi Stock Exchange from 2017 to 2023. Board quality is captured by an unweighted Board Characteristics Index based on ten board-related attributes. AEM is proxied by performance-matched discretionary accruals, while REM is derived from abnormal cash flows from operations, abnormal production costs, and abnormal discretionary expenses. Panel regression models are estimated, and Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS) is applied to address heteroskedasticity. The main results show that board quality is negatively and significantly related to REM, with a coefficient of –0.0701 and a z-value of –3.19 at the 1% level. In contrast, the relationship between board quality and AEM is negative but statistically insignificant, with a coefficient of –0.0194. These findings indicate that boards are better able to constrain earnings manipulation through operating activities than through accrual choices. For Vietnamese listed firms, stronger board monitoring over real business decisions may help improve the transparency of financial reporting.

AUDIT QUALITY AS MODERATOR AND PROFITABILITY AS MEDIATOR: A DUAL-PROCESS MODEL OF FINANCIAL DISTRESS DETERMINANTS IN INDONESIAN PROPERTY SECTOR

This study examines the determinants of financial distress in Indonesian property and real estate companies, with audit quality as a moderating variable and profitability as a mediating variable. The study is motivated by the vulnerability of the property sector to macroeconomic shocks, including the COVID-19 pandemic (2021–2022), high inflation (2023), and interest rate hikes (2024), which have collectively intensified financial pressure on firms. The sample consists of property and real estate companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange during 2021–2024, selected using purposive sampling. Panel data regression and Moderated Regression Analysis (MRA) with the Random Effect Model (REM) were employed to test the proposed hypotheses. The results indicate that leverage and earnings management significantly increase financial distress, while liquidity, sales growth, and tax avoidance show no significant direct effect. Furthermore, audit quality moderates the relationship between liquidity and financial distress, as well as tax avoidance and financial distress, but does not moderate the effects of leverage, sales growth, or earnings management. Profitability mediates only the relationship between earnings management and financial distress, suggesting that firms with higher profitability are better able to offset the negative impact of earnings manipulation on financial stability. These findings suggest that maintaining balanced leverage and transparent reporting practices are crucial to avoid financial distress, particularly in capital-intensive sectors such as property and real estate.

Influence Structure Capital and Risk Credit to Profitability in Banking Companies Listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) Period (2019-2023)