Purpose: This paper aims to examine whether and how gender diversity and CEO gender can influence firm value in the emerging market of Pakistan. The study further tests whether these relations vary across state-owned enterprises (SOE) and non-state-owned enterprises (NSOE).Design/methodology/approach: This study considers Pakistani listed firms over the period 2010-2017. The firms have been divided into SOE and NSOE for additional analysis. Tobin’s Q is used to measure firm’s value.Findings: The authors document that female directors (FDirectors) on corporate boards is positively associated with firm value. The findings also illustrate that female CEOs (FCEOs) enhances a firm value. Additional analyses show that the influence of FDirectors and FCEOs on firm value is stronger in NSOE than in SOE.Practical implications: The results suggest that gender diversity and CEO gender play a significant role in corporate decisions. The findings imply that FDirectors discipline the management, reduce agency conflicts and thereby improve corporate governance, resulting in higher firm value.Originality/value: This study has two important contributions. First, while prior studies mostly based their arguments on using gender diversity of corporate boards, this study shows that a firm performance can be significantly improved if a female serves as a CEO. Second, this study also tests the stated relations for SOE and NSOE and show that gender diversity plays a significant role in NSOE than in SOE.

The coronavirus (COVID‐19) pandemic has seriously threatened the lives of the people. The pandemic has also threatened the survival of the firms, which has drawn the attention of policymakers and corporate governance practitioners around the world. In this study, we focus on how corporate governance practices can help firms to survive during COVID‐19 crisis. For this purpose, we take insights from prior crises by reviewing leading business journals articles and identify key corporate governance mechanisms that could potentially be effective in the ongoing COVID‐19 crisis. Our review of a large body of literature highlights several governance mechanisms that may help firms to cope with COVID‐19 crisis. These governance attributes include risk management committees, board diversity, independent directors, foreign investors, institutional ownership, ownership concentration, CEO's dual roles, block ownership, and family ownership. We provide several policy implications after reviewing the corporate governance literature. Our review illustrates that firms may be subject to at least one of the identified governance mechanisms and they may learn how these governance attributes can be effective in the COVID‐19 crisis. Our review illustrates that independent risk management committees, institutional ownership, board independence, blockholders, and family ownership are some of the essential and effective governance mechanisms compared to other governance attributes during COVID‐19 crisis.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how corporate governance instruments impact firm value in the context of Pakistan. This paper considers state- and non-state-owned enterprises and examines whether the influence of corporate governance on firm value varies across firms having different nature of ownership.Design/methodology/approach: This study opts for an unbalanced sample of state- and non-state-owned enterprises for the period 2010-2014. Panel data regression is adopted for estimation of main results. The suitable model, i.e. fixed and random effect model, is selected using Hausman specification test.Findings: The notable findings show that board independence has a significant and positive relationship with firm value only for state-owned companies. Furthermore, the results show that market capitalization and return on assets have a significant and positive association with firm value for both state- and non-state-owned enterprises. All other variables are found insignificant for both state- and non-state-owned companies, but the results are consistent with those reported in previous studies.Practical implication: The findings of the study suggest that fair induction of independent directors, appropriate board size and cost-benefit analysis to conduct frequent meetings can help corporations to improve their performance.Originality/value: This study is adding to the current literature by providing new insights and shows that the impact of corporate governance on firm value varies across firms of different types of ownership, i.e. state- and non-state-owned enterprises.

This study investigates the volatility spillover effect among Asian emerging markets in pre and post 2007 financial crisis period. The sample includes five emerging markets of Asia named; China, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, and India. The asymmetric volatility spillover among the stock markets is examined using an extended EGARCH model. The results highlight certain interesting key findings. We find bidirectional volatility spillover between stock markets of India and Sri Lanka in both sub-periods. However the volatility spillover is bidirectional between stock markets of Hong Kong and India; Pakistan and India in pre-crisis period, while in stock markets of Sri Lanka and Pakistan in post-crisis period. The integration of emerging markets of Asia has important implications for investors and policy makers