Dividend policy of publicly quoted companies in emerging markets : the case of Jordan

The determinants of corporate dividend policy remain controversial despite half a century of active research. Over that time a number of competing theories of dividend policy have been proposed, but no consensus has been reached about their explanatory power. This thesis examines the determinants of dividend policy of publicly quoted companies in Jordan as a case study of an emerging market. The study uses a firm-level panel data set of all publicly traded firms on the Ammam Stock Exchange between 1989 and 2000. Nine research hypotheses are developed, which are used to represent the main theories of corporate dividends. The results of studies conducted in this thesis suggest that the proportion of stocks held by insiders and state ownership significantly affect the amount of dividends paid, but not the decision to pay dividends. Larger, mature, profitable firms with less investment opportunities are more likely to pay dividends. These factors are found to also positively affect the level of dividends. Results provide no support for the signalling hypothesis. The thesis concludes with a discussion of some of the implications of all results and suggestions for further research

Does technological progress help mitigate environmental pollution in high-tech countries? : evidence from a CS-ARDL framework

This paper investigates the role of technological progress (represented by information and communication technology-ICT) in mitigating carbon emissions in OECD countries. By applying the cross-section autoregressive distributed lag model (SC-ARDL) framework to 38 OECD countries from 1990 to 2019, this paper confirms the significant effects of ICT (proxied by the mobile cellular subscription per 100 people and the percentage of population using the Internet) on carbon emissions. Furthermore, results from the CS-ARDL framework also document the significant impact of GDP growth, renewable energy consumption and financial development on carbon emissions. These findings offer several crucial implications for both policymakers and researchers