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“Kidfluencer” is a relatively new term and refers to where young people actively exert influence on lifestyle and consumer behaviour through the use of social media. This study focused on capturing the complexities of this phenomenon, and issues of concern for policymakers that subsequently occur.

The study used semi-structured interviews to capture the retrospective experiences of ten young people as “kidfluencers” on the social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

The findings identified several issues associated with being a kidfluencer, such as affecting individuals’ work-life balance, their education, how safe they felt online and physically, how they maintained friendships, pressure to increase their profile and their mental health well-being. Overall, the study suggests that kidfluencing has specific negative effects on kidfluencers and their childhood experiences, which should be of concern to policy makers.

All participants were above the age of eighteen. Therefore, their contributions reflect upon their past, rather than speaking about their recent experiences, which can lead to retrospective bias. The sample size is small, reflecting the difficulties in accessing this sensitive area for study.

The study provides support for the decision taken in France to introduce legislation that protects kidfluencers, which may suggest a need for legislation in other countries.

The study is relevant in the context of the new law adopted by the French National Assembly in 2020 to provide a legal framework for the activities of child influencers on a range of online platforms. To date, France is the only country where such laws have been enacted. So far, there has been no specific evaluation of this law, and very little research on welfare issues experienced by kidfluencers themselves, making this study timely.

The debate on the impact of corporate governance frameworks on bank performance is still ongoing and the large empirical literature on the association between them is still inconclusive. This study aims to contribute to this flow of research by detecting the association between six corporate governance variables and cost efficiency and return on assets.

This study exploits the generalised method of moments method on a sample of 150 banks operating in 15 MENA countries between 2009 and 2020.

The empirical results show that larger boards and the existence of large share owners result in a lower cost efficiency and profitability. Conversely, it was found that a higher percentage of women board members, and the presence of an audit committee boost bank performance. Finally, the results do not show that board independence and chairperson-CEO role duality play any substantial role in determining Middle East and North Africa (MENA) bank cost efficiency and profitability.

The findings of this paper suggest putting cap on the size of boards, restricting ownership block holding, encouraging higher gender diversity and selecting independent, non-executive directors based on experience and expertise, not only to meet the regulatory requirements in the MENA banking sector.

The added value of this paper is that it proposes directives for the MENA banking regulators regarding the optimal board of director’s structure related to size and composition.