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How female leadership and auditor affiliations shape audit fees: evidence from Egypt
Get PDFData availability statement: Data available on request from the authors.JEL Classification: M42.Purpose:
This study aims to examine how female directors on corporate boards and audit committees, and auditor affiliations (Big 4 versus Egyptian firms affiliated with foreign auditors), influence audit fees. This examination is driven by the global call for increased female representation in leadership roles and its potential implications for audit quality and financial transparency.
Design/methodology/approach:
A sample of non-financial companies listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange is used for the period 2011–2020. The authors used multivariate regression models, the Heckman two-stage and tokenism to support the analysis.
Findings:
The results are threefold. First, this analysis reveals that female directors, whether on corporate boards or audit committees, are more likely to choose higher-quality audits in the form of high audit fees. Second, both Big 4 firms and Egyptian audit firms affiliated with foreign auditors are positively associated with audit fees and earn significant audit fee premiums. Third, a minor difference in audit fee premiums could be attributed to the existence of female directors.
Research limitations/implications:
Future research may expand the analysis performed in this study by investigating the characteristics related to female directors (e.g. education, experience and age) on audit fees.
Practical implications:
This study suggests insights for regulatory bodies, corporate decision-makers, auditors and corporate governance researchers. For instance, this study reveals that the Big 4 are not homogenous and provide different audit quality levels along with significant audit fee premiums.
Originality/value:
This study extends and contributes to the growing literature on female representation in corporate leadership. First, this study adds to the limited research in Egypt by examining the effect of female board representation on audit quality. Second, this study adds to the extant literature on the gender of financial experts by demonstrating that female financial expert is more likely to demand high-quality audits. Finally, the results have significant implications for policymakers. For instance, this study reveals that the Big 4 are not homogenous and provide different audit quality levels along with significant audit fee premiums.The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article
The effect of lateral thrust on the progressive slope failure under excavation and rainfall conditions
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The data underpinning this publication can be accessed from Brunel University London's data repository, Brunelfigshare, under a CC BY licence at: https://doi.org/10.17633/rd.brunel.25360690.Large landslides can involve the multiple failures of regional slopes. To understand the effect of lateral thrust caused by the failure of one slope on its surroundings, the failures of two adjacent highway slopes in Guangdong Province, China, were investigated in detail. The interactive failure processes and landslide morphological characteristics of the two slopes were first analyzed based on the on-site investigation. Then, a plane mechanical model of a large-scale slope was established to evaluate the significant influence of the lateral thrust generated by the west slope acting on the east excavated slope. Furthermore, the extrusion effect of the west slope was modelled under the alternate excavation disturbance and rainfall by transferring the thrust forces onto the interface elements, and the induced failure mechanism and instability mode of the east slope under lateral thrust were reproduced numerically. The results show that the compression-shear failure occurred at the middle and rear slope bodies because of the lateral thrust, which led to the formation of a thrust landslide and the final instability of the east slope.UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), UK (Grant No. EP/Y02754X/1), the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) New Investigator Award, UK (Grant No. EP/V028723/1) and the Collaborative Innovation Center for Prevention and Control of Mountain Geological Hazards of Zhejiang Province, China (Grant No. IBGDP-2023-05)
Interdisciplinary integrative capabilities as a catalyst of responsible technology-enabled innovation: A higher education case study of Design MSc dissertation projects
Get PDFThe data underpinning this publication can be accessed from the data repository of Brunel University London, Brunel Figshare, under a CC BY-NC licence: https://doi.org/10.17633/rd.brunel. 25555212.v1.Supplementary information is available online at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10798-024-09901-w#Sec7 .It has been acknowledged that global challenges are in the way of delivering responsible innovation, as reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals – a set of strategic objectives formulated by the United Nations General Assembly, to promote environmentally, societally, and economically-sustainable development. Design higher education has an important role to play in equipping the next generation of professionals with knowledge and skills for tackling pressing system-level challenges. Sustainable design research and ways of integrating emerging technologies in future design higher education curricula have, separately, attracted significant interest in recent years. However, comparatively little effort has concentrated on the role that a broader range of technologies can play in shaping the design higher education provision with system-level sustainability challenges in mind. This article presents an analysis of 180 Design MSc dissertation projects, implemented at a UK higher education institution between 2019 and 2022, focusing on research challenges of societal and industrial relevance. The data set includes a mapping of dissertation projects to relevant technologies, industry sectors, and Sustainable Development Goals. Data analysis suggests a balanced distribution of projects across a range of sustainability goals, although under-represented thematic areas have also been highlighted. The methods adopted for this study, based on a systematic study of relational patterns reflecting associations of dissertation projects with technologies, industry sectors, and sustainability goals, provide a blueprint for future data-driven research on the role played by technologies within student projects in design higher education, with an emphasis on their relevance to sustainable innovation challenges.No funding was received for conducting this study
Design of Broadband Microstrip Quasi-Yagi Antenna with double branch structure
Get PDFIn this paper, a Broadband quasi-Yagi antenna is proposed for sub-6G and WLAN applications. It consists of a quasi-Yagi antenna with a double branch structure. Simulation results indicate that the antenna exhibits an impedance bandwidth ranging from 2.35 GHz to 4.47 GHz (61.9%) and a peak gain of 3.23 dBi at 4.3 GHz
The COVID-19 pandemic and European trade patterns: A sectoral analysis
Get PDFData availability statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.JEL Classification: C25; E61; F13; F15.This article examines how the COVID-19 pandemic affected European trade patterns. Specifically, dynamic panel data models are estimated over the period 2019M1–2021M12 to assess the effects on exports and imports of various sectors and products (selected on the basis of their trading volume or strategic importance) of the restrictions and of other policy measures adopted by national governments during the crisis. The results suggest that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was heterogeneous across sectors and product types, both the initial drop and the subsequent rebound being different depending on sectoral characteristics and the degree of resilience. In particular, trade flows of durable products were more significantly affected by the pandemic compared to those of non-durable ones.British Academy/Leverhulme Trust (grant no. SRG2021\210376, ‘The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on trade flows and patterns: evidence from Europe’)
Visual and material representations of ageing, space and rhythms in everyday life
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The data that has been used is confidential.A focus on the materiality within ageing studies brings into focus the material dimensions of space, rhythms and material objects in everyday life. The aim of this paper is to explore meanings around space in the context of the daily lives of people growing older and how materiality is embodied, embedded and performed in the material and social context of our everyday lives. The paper draws on data from the empirical research study Photographing Everyday Life: Ageing, Lived Experiences, Time and Space funded by the ESRC, UK. The focus of the project was to explore the significance of the ordinary and day-to-day and focus on the everyday meanings, lived experiences, practical activities, and social contexts in which people in mid-to-later life live their daily lives. The research involved a diverse sample of 62 women and men aged 50 years and over who took photographs of their different daily routines to create a weekly visual diary. The data reveals three interconnecting whilst analytically distinct themes within the materiality of ageing and the spaces around everyday life: (1) Space, materiality and everyday life; (2) Rhythms, routines and materiality; and (3) Social and material connectivity. The paper concludes by highlighting a complex engagement with space, in which participants drew and re-drew boundaries surrounding meanings of space, sometimes within the same interview or even within a discussion of the same photograph. Moreover, a focus on materiality has elicited rich and illuminating accounts of how people in mid-to-later life experience the intersections between ageing, bodies, time and space in their everyday lives.Economic and Social Research Council, UK (RES-061-25-0459)
Automated Assessment of Capital Allowances
Get PDFCapital allowances play a crucial role in enabling businesses to claim tax relief on specific capital expenditures, reducing their taxable profits and overall tax burden. However, the current manual process for managing capital allowance claims is time-consuming and complex, particularly for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that often lack access to expert consultation. Furthermore, the distinct nature of construction expenditure on buildings adds to the complexity, with unique costs and data for each property and project. These challenges underscore the necessity for the development of automated technologies and systems for capital allowance assessment. To address these challenges, we present the development of an automated capital allowance assessment system comprising three key components: a capital allowance expert system, a tax coding system, and an integrated web-based application. The capital allowance expert system covers the entire process of capital allowance assessment, leveraging rules and procedures extracted from standardised processes and expertise. The tax coding system automatically classifies textual costing items into corresponding tax codes, addressing the complexity of capital allowance rules and frequent legislative changes. The integrated web-based application offers an interactive experience for data gathering, analysis, coding, and report generation, providing a comprehensive solution for efficient and accurate capital allowance assessment. This automated system addresses the complexities and inefficiencies associated with manual capital allowance assessment. It potentially benefits tax authorities in standardising and streamlining allowance assessment processes while fostering economic growth through accessible services for SMEs and promoting environmental sustainability by encouraging energy-efficient practices.10.13039/501100006041-Innovate U.K. Knowledge Transfer Partnership Program
A learning-based granular variable neighborhood search for a multi-period election logistics problem with time-dependent profits
Get PDFSupplementary data are available online at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221724004545#:~:text=Appendix%20A.-,Supplementary%20data,-References .Production, Manufacturing, Transportation and Logistics.Planning the election campaign for leaders of a political party is a complex problem. The party representatives, running mates, and campaign managers have to design an efficient routing and scheduling plan to visit multiple locations while respecting time and budget constraints. Given the limited time of election campaigns in most countries, every minute should be used effectively, and there is very little room for error. In this paper, we formalize this problem as the multiple Roaming Salesman Problem (mRSP), a new variant of the recently introduced Roaming Salesman Problem (RSP), where a predefined number of political representatives visit a set of cities during a planning horizon to maximize collected rewards, subject to budget and time constraints. Cities can be visited more than once and associated rewards are time-dependent (increasing over time) according to the day of the visit and the recency of previous visits. We develop a compact Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) formulation complemented with effective valid inequalities. Since commercial solvers can obtain optimal solutions only for small-sized instances, we develop a Learning-based Granular Variable Neighborhood Search and demonstrate its capability of providing high-quality solutions in short CPU times on real-world instances. The adaptive nature of our algorithm refers to its ability to dynamically adjust the neighborhood structure based on the progress of the search. Our algorithm generates the best-known results for many instances
Addressing the power of news in financial markets: Analysing stock returns with GARCH models
Get PDFThis thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonRisk management remains a paramount concern within the investment industry. Despite a wealth of literature and papers dedicated to stock volatility estimation and forecasting analysis, many experts redirected their attention to the relationship between news and stock returns.
This thesis comprises three essays investigating the impact of news (newspaper headlines) on stock return indices by applying GARCH-type models (GARCH, EGARCH, and MGARCH). The initial essay delves into the returns estimation and forecasting of the GARCH model using various distributions in a portfolio context. The subsequent essay introduces news sentiment as an additional variable in GARCH and EGARCH models to effectively explore the impact on stock return estimations. The final essay addresses the correlations between the geopolitical risk news and energy stock (renewable and non-renewable energy stock) return fluctuations, explicitly focusing on the Russian-Ukraine war period. Multivariate GARCH models are employed.
Chapter 2 seeks to assess the accuracy of the GARCH (1, 1) model in estimating and predicting portfolio returns and conditional variance for long-term investment, featuring two distinct distributions (normal and students’ t distribution). Weekly data, beginning in June 2010 and ending in June 2020 for ten years, were abstracted within the BRICS market. The findings underscore the superiority of the standard distribution assumption over the Student's t-distribution with GARCH (1, 1) for estimating and predicting conditional volatility.
Chapter 3 analyses news impact on company stock returns and focuses on information within diverse industries. It evaluates news intensity, news sentiments (positive and negative news sentiment), and the VIX index (Benchmark index of the broad U.S. stock market) across individual companies and portfolio returns within selected APEC countries. Chapter 3 uses daily stock price data spanning 2017-2022 to employ analysis based on plain GARCH (1, 1) and EGARCH (1, 1) models. Models incorporating VIX log returns and varied news types as supplementary variables reveal results that diverge across industries and countries yet consistently affirm a robust correlation between the VIX index, news indexes, particularly news intensities and stock returns. The outperformance of GARCH over EGARCH becomes evident, highlighting stocks' heightened susceptibility to negative news. Chapter 4 scrutinises the repercussions of geopolitical risk-related news on renewable and non-renewable energy stock returns, particularly during the Russian-Ukraine war period. This examination involves testing three renewable energy stock indexes alongside three indexes representative of non-renewable energy stocks on a global, European, and US scale. By collecting daily energy stock index data from 2022 to 2023, the chapter applies the MGARCH model to elucidate correlations among the stock return indexes and GPR news. The analysis shows a positive correlation between world-level, European-level and American energy stock returns. The chapter also finds that increased headlines concerning geopolitical risk correspond to heightened renewable energy prices and decreased non-renewable energy prices
Luminosity determination using Z boson production at the CMS experiment
Get PDFData Availability Statement: This manuscript has no associated data or
the data will not be deposited. [Authors’ comment: Release and preser
vation of data used by the CMS Collaboration as the basis for publi
cations is guidedbytheCMSpolicyasstatedinhttps://cms-docdb.cern.
ch/cgibin/PublicDocDB/RetrieveFile?docid=6032&filename=CMSD
ataPolicyV1.2.pdf&version=2. CMS data preservation,re-use and open
access policy.]A preprint version of the article is available at arXiv:2309.01008v2 [hep-ex], https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.01008v2 . Comments: Replaced with the published version. Added the journal reference and the DOI. All the figures and tables can be found at: https://cms-results.web.cern.ch/cms-results/public-results/publications/LUM-21-001 (CMS Public Pages)The measurement of Z boson production is presented as a method to determine the integrated luminosity of CMS data sets. The analysis uses proton–proton collision data, recorded by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC in 2017 at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV . Events with Z bosons decaying into a pair of muons are selected. The total number of Z bosons produced in a fiducial volume is determined, together with the identification efficiencies and correlations from the same data set, in small intervals of 20 pb-1 of integrated luminosity, thus facilitating the efficiency and rate measurement as a function of time and instantaneous luminosity. Using the ratio of the efficiency-corrected numbers of Z bosons, the precisely measured integrated luminosity of one data set is used to determine the luminosity of another. For the first time, a full quantitative uncertainty analysis of the use of Z bosons for the integrated luminosity measurement is performed. The uncertainty in the extrapolation between two data sets, recorded in 2017 at low and high instantaneous luminosity, is less than 0.5%. We show that the Z boson rate measurement constitutes a precise method, complementary to traditional methods, with the potential to improve the measurement of the integrated luminosity.SCOAP
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