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The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of internal and external corporate governance mechanisms on the probability of engaging in tax aggressiveness.

This study uses a sample of 52 firms listed on the Tunis stock exchange observed over the 2003–2016 period (The authors had to stop sampling in 2016 because the measurement of tax aggressiveness requires 4 years after the year of study. Therefore, the data on the measurement of tax aggressiveness were collected until 2020). This paper uses the logistic regression technique.

The results of the first logistic regression show that ownership structure and the supervision role of the tax authorities are determining factors that explain tax aggressiveness; while, the attributes of the board of directors does not seem to explain the probability of engaging in aggressive tax strategies. To further probe this question, the authors carried out additional analyses that examine the moderating effect of controlling shareholders on the relationship between the attributes of the board and tax aggressiveness. The results of our additional regressions indicate that the effect of these attributes improves in cases of non-presence of a controlling shareholder. This implies that the role that the board of directors can play in controlling management is possibly conditioned by the presence or no of control block holders.

The major limitation of this study is that it concentrates only on Tunisian listed companies because they are the only companies the financial statements of which are publicly available in Tunisia. Although the sample is relatively small due to the problem of data availability, it appears to be satisfactory given the 15-year sampling period (i.e. from 2003 to 2016).

The results of the study may help Tunisian regulators create requirements for corporate governance (such as the size of the board of directors and audit committee or the concentration of ownership). Moreover, this study not only focuses on the effect of corporate governance mechanisms on tax aggressiveness but also provides shareholders with information on the governance mechanisms to which they should pay more attention in their desire to obtain more efficient tax results.

The findings are also useful for tax policymakers seeking to identify the circumstances that give rise to an increased risk of tax aggressiveness, as tax aggressive behavior and the resulting non-payment of taxes also have societal implications. In fact, taxes also play an important role in financing the provision of public goods, making corporation tax a matter of public concern.

The present study differs from others in the existing literature by designing a more precise measure of tax aggressiveness and examining the interaction between two internal governance mechanisms; the presence of a controlling shareholder and the attributes of the board of directors. This study also examines the impact of the control exercised by the tax authorities on the behavior of firms in terms of tax aggressiveness.

This study aims to investigate the impact of job loss on the mental health of individuals in Tunisia during the COVID-19 crisis.

In this research, the authors use the counterfactual decomposition technique and the potential outcome approach. In the first part, the authors calculated mental health indicators for all individuals included in the sample based on the World Health Organization-5 items. The individuals were then grouped into two subpopulations: the first group included those who had lost their jobs and the second group included individuals whose status in the labor market had remained unchanged. In the second part, the authors used the Blinder and Oaxaca decomposition to explain the mean difference in the mental health scores between the two groups and determine the factors contributing to this difference.

The empirical results identified symptoms of depressed mood, decreased energy and loss of interest in several individuals. Based on these three symptoms, the authors were able to classify individuals into three types of depression: mild, moderate and severe. In addition, it appeared that job loss had significantly contributed to the worsening mental health of the individuals.

Although the psychological impact of the COVID-19 outbreak among health-care professionals has been the subject of other studies in health literature on Tunisia, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no research has addressed the impact of job loss on the mental health of Tunisian workers. Thus, this study fills this gap in the literature.

The study aims to compare the level of accounting conservatism amongst the sample companies prior to the 2011 uprising and after that uprising. The study proceeds further to examine the association between accounting conservatism and the level of leverage and profitability of the sample companies covering the same period.

First, a review of the extant literature on accounting conservatism is undertaken. Second, the sample comprises all the non-financial companies listed on the Egyptian Exchange. Accounting conservatism is measured using the market-to-book (MTB) ratio, which is one of the most widely used proxies for determining the extent of accounting conservatism in prior literature. The two-sample t-test has been used to compare the level of accounting conservatism six years prior to the 2011 uprising and four years following that uprising. Univariate and multivariate analyses have been used to examine the association between some firm characteristics and the level of accounting conservatism amongst the sample companies at the two investigated periods.

The evidence implies that the sample companies are actually engaging in less-conservative accounting policies following the uprising. The results also reveal that data for the first period seems to have greater variations in the first period than in the second period, as can be seen from the values of the standard deviation. The multivariate analysis reported a significant positive relationship between only size and the level of accounting conservatism at both periods.

This study adds Egyptian evidence with respect to the directions of accounting conservatism throughout crisis periods, as the majority of prior studies focus on countries with developed capital markets. In addition, the absence of any specific evidence concerning the direction of accounting conservatism during crisis periods will lead to naïve investors misinterpreting earnings figures and not realising the actual value of their shares.

The results reported in this study may encourage those investors to seek out extensive, widely-sourced information regarding investee firms before deciding whether to hold or sell their holdings. Furthermore, the results presented in this paper should therefore be of interest to regulators and standard-setters charged with developing accounting standards to improve the quality of accounting information.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first and most recent study that examines the level of accounting conservatism amongst non-financial companies in a developing country like Egypt.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between corporate tax avoidance and environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance and the moderating effect of financial constraints on the relationship between corporate tax avoidance and ESG performance.

The sample consists of a global data set involving 24,259 firm-year observations from 49 countries for the years 2011–2020. Corporate ESG performance was extracted from the Thomson Reuters database. The book-tax difference model was used for measuring corporate tax avoidance, while financially constrained firms were identified using the Kaplan and Zingales (1997) index.

The results show that firms with higher tax avoidance are associated with higher ESG performance, but lower ESG performance is shown for firms with higher financial constraints. The results further indicate that the positive impact of corporate tax avoidance on ESG performance becomes weaker for firms with higher financial constraints.

The findings imply that policymakers and regulators should focus on mechanisms to promote more internal funds to assist firms in pursuing ESG-related initiatives, such as through tax incentives. Investors should understand the “smokescreen” effect of corporate tax avoidance on ESG performance, especially for firms with financial constraints.

This analysis provides international evidence on the link between tax avoidance and ESG and considers the joint effect of pressures for internal funds, through tax and financing constraints, on corporate ESG performance.

Important reserves of oil and gas, which are left to be discovered and produced, are mainly concentrated in challenging locations and under severe conditions such as high pressure (HP)/high temperature (HT). The presence of aggressive environments including H₂S, CO₂ and chlorides plus HP/HT causes a series of corrosion problems, which cost the oil industry billions of dollars a year. Thus, there is an increasing challenge for tubes (i.e. oil country tubular goods, for short, OCTG) used in producing oil and gas. The purpose of this study is to summarize different kinds of corrosion problems and their mitigation, to more efficiently protect OCTG from corrosion.

To effectively select proper mitigation methods, the mechanism of corrosion must be understood, which can be classified into four categories: sweet corrosion, sour corrosion, galvanic corrosion and microbiologically induced corrosion. Also, the effects of environmental and material factors on the corrosion rate are presented. Subsequently, current technology of mitigating these corrosion problems has been discussed, including the development of materials, application of chemical inhibitors and application of protective layers.

It is stressed that limits exist for each individual mitigation method; therefore, a careful balance between economic life of OCTG and safety in operation is required.

The main purpose of this essay is to give a brief review and detailed introduction and analysis about those technologies.

The purpose of this study is to describe the effect of religiosity on luxury and counterfeit purchase intentions and to determine the role of consumer ethics in the context of counterfeit purchase intention. The conceptual framework is based on Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). In the context of counterfeit consumption, religiosity is proposed to be an added component to the theory, while ethical consumption is proposed to mediate the relationship between religiosity and counterfeit purchase intention. In the context of luxury consumption, religiosity is proposed to precede TPB components which then affect luxury purchase intention.

This is a descriptive study; this study uses a mixed-methods approach, where eight semi-structured in-depth interviews and 500 surveys were conducted and distributed to Egyptian luxury consumers.

The major results suggest that religiosity and ethical consumption negatively affect counterfeit purchase intention as proposed. The results also reveal that religiosity did not necessitate a negative attitude toward luxury consumption. Religiosity was found to have a positive effect on attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. Only subjective norms had significant effect on luxury purchase intention in the research context.

This paper contributes to the TPB by adding religiosity to the theory components as well as integrating the theory of planned behavior with Consumer’s Ethics theory in the context of counterfeit consumption. The study is an attempt to compare between luxury and counterfeit purchase intention while considering the role of individual’s religiosity in these purchases.