This study aims to examine association between one of the most important corporate governance mechanisms; the size of boards of directors and firm characteristic factors, namely; firm's size, firm's age, firm's leverage and firm's profitability. To achieve this objective of the study, the data were collected from a sample of 21 industrial Jordanian companies listed in Amman stock exchange for the period 2005 – 2012. To test the hypotheses of the study, multiple linear regression analysis using SPSS 16.0 was utilized. The regression analysis confirmed a significant relation between the size of boards and firm characteristic factors. In particular, the results confirm a significantly positive relation between the board size and firm's size proxy. While firm's age, firm's leverage ratio and firm's profitability are significantly negative in relation to the boards size. These results suggests that further research should be done regarding other corporate governance mechanisms such as; board composition, chief executive status. And also regarding other factors that may help in determining the size of board of directors. This study will contribute by its results which have important implications for investors, decision makers and regulator on corporate governance in Jordan were they going on reform of corporate boards.

This study aims to investigate and examine the factors affecting stocks liquidity by using data of 100 share holding companies that represent Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) index in the recent period from 2011 to 2013. The result of fixed effects regression model indicates that firm's size and earnings per share (EPS) have a significant positive impact on stock liquidity proxies. While firm's profitability have a significant negative impact. On the other hand, the results indicate a non significant statistical effect of stock dividends and firm's leverage ratio. Based on the study's results we recommend that it is better for investors and stock market authority to consider these variables in stock liquidity forecasts. This study is one of the very few studies which have investigated the determination of stock liquidity in emerging markets. Most of the previous empirical studies focuses on the market liquidity as a whole. Therefore this study attempts to fill this gap by providing an empirical evidence and stimulating discussion about this issue. Thus we expect that this paper will contribute to the stock liquidity literature in Jordan, and we expect that its results will be helpful and useful for investors and market management.

This paper examines both short and long-run relationship between interest rate and Arab Monetary Fund indices for five Arabian stock market index, namely: Jordan, Egypt, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait, using monthly data selected from Arabian Monetary Fund database, for the period started from 1 st January 2014 to 30 th June 2016, and employing various econometrics tests, such as: Augmented Dicky Fuller test, Vector Auto Regression, Johansen test of Coinetgration, Granger causality test, and Variance Decomposition. The results indicate that there is a significant negative relationship between interest rate and stock market index in Egypt, while it was insignificant in Qatar and Kuwait. However, a significant positive relationship was found in Jordan and Oman.The result of Co-integration test concluded that the interest rate and the stock market index shows a long-run association only in Qatar, but not in Jordan, Egypt, Oman and Kuwait.Our Granger causality test could not establish causality of any direction between interest rate and stock market index in Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait. However there was a bidirectional relationship in Jordan, and a unidirectional relationship in Egypt running from stock market index to interest rate.Finally, the results of variance decomposition have shown that lending rate plays important role in explaining (26.54%, 26.01%) variation in Jordanian and Kuwaiti stock market prices index respectively. While only a little variation in stock index can be explained by interest rate especially in Egypt, Oman and Qatar, where it shows that shocks of interest rate explains (13.18%, 13.13%, and 0.07%) respectively.The findings of this study can be helpful for the investors for selecting optimum portfolio.Based on our findings, the study recommends further research to in depth investigating the reason behind the lack of causal relation in some countries, and employ other macroeconomic variables that could explain stock price.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. All in-text references underlined in blue are added to the original document and are linked to publications on ResearchGate, letting you access and read them immediately. Abstract This study examines the causal relationship between financial development and economic growth in Jordan through investigating the validity of Patrick's (1966) proposed hypotheses; the Supply-Leading (i.e. financial development causes economic growth) and the Demand-Pulling (i.e. economic growth cause financial development), using Granger's causality, co-integration, and vector error correction techniques. The results indicate the existence of along run equilibrium between financial development and economic growth. In addition, there is a one-directional causality relationship from financial development to economic growth in both the long-and short-run. This result suggests that financial development in Jordan is expected to play an important role in the future in determining the economic growth.

This paper investigates whether ownership concentration has significant effects on the performance of 74 Jordanian firms listed in Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) for the period from 2003 to 2008, and the ways it does. We define Ownership concentration through four dimensions named; the percentage of share owned by all (All.B), largest (TOP1), two largest (TOP2), and three largest (TOP3) blockholders. The study is conducted over two stages. In the first stage, the exploratory one, we examine whether the Jordanian firms have concentration in its ownership structure. In the second stage, the empirical one-based on panel data-cross sectional regressions were run for each of ownership concentration measures, with some firm specific variables (control variables) (i.e. firm size, leverage ratio, and capital intensity) on firm performance. The results indicate that while most of the Jordanian firms can be characterized as highly concentrated, we observe that the size of the second and other blockholders is not significant as the first one. Empirical results show significant negative effects of ownership concentration on firm performance.

This study aims to examine association between one of the most important corporate governance mechanisms; the size of boards of directors and firm characteristic factors, namely; firm's size, firm's age, firm's leverage and firm's profitability. To achieve this objective of the study, the data were collected from a sample of 21 industrial Jordanian companies listed in Amman stock exchange for the period 2005-2012. To test the hypotheses of the study, multiple linear regression analysis using SPSS 16.0 was utilized. The regression analysis confirmed a significant relation between the size of boards and firm characteristic factors. In particular, the results confirm a significantly positive relation between the board size and firm's size proxy. While firm's age, firm's leverage ratio and firm's profitability are significantly negative in relation to the boards size. These results suggests that further research should be done regarding other corporate governance mechanisms such as; board composition, chief executive status. And also regarding other factors that may help in determining the size of board of directors. This study will contribute by its results which have important implications for investors, decision makers and regulator on corporate governance in Jordan were they going on reform of corporate boards.