Dr Ammad Ahmed
Supervision
Postgraduate research supervision
Accepting applications from PhD students interested in corporate governance, financial accounting, and auditing area
Teaching
MANM297 Accounting & Finance for Business
MANM400 Cases in Accounting & Finance
Publications
This study investigates the impact of corporate governance practices (namely board characteristics, ownership structure, and audit committee characteristics) on corporate tax avoidance. For this purpose, this study uses generalised least squares regression on a sample of 138 companies listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange. Ten-year data from 2009 to 2018 are collected from published annual reports, comprising 1380 firm-year observations. The findings highlight that board independence, concentrated ownership, and audit committee gender diversity are negatively associated with tax avoidance. Conversely, managerial ownership and audit committee independence positively influence aggressive tax behaviour. Additional analysis reveals that these impacts are nonlinear and change with the different levels of tax avoidance. Enhanced governance stifles tax avoidance at lower levels; however, it encourages tax avoidance when firms are already aggressively avoiding taxes. This scenario represents a 'double down' behaviour depicted by the Pakistani corporate sector. This is one of the foremost studies to explore the impact of corporate governance on tax avoidance in Pakistan. It contributes to the literature by examining the impact of under-researched factors such as board meetings and audit committee characteristics and provides insights into the conflicting findings on board characteristics and ownership structure.
We examine the impact of religious beliefs on loan repayments in 770 microfinance institutions (MFIs) across 65 countries over the period 2006-2018. We find robust evidence of a negative relationship between religiosity and loan losses in MFIs. We also find that the relationship between religiosity and loan losses is stronger for MFIs in Protestant-dominated countries than in Catholic-dominated countries. Moreover, religiosity improves the operational self-sufficiency of MFIs through a reduction in loan losses. We find that religiosity does not improve the loan repayment behaviour of women borrowers, but it reduces the loan size per borrower. Overall, our evidence suggests that although religiosity reduces loan losses through religiosity-induced lender-risk aversion, it does not improve the loan repayment behaviour of borrowers. We also use several approaches to evaluate our results to the effects of endogeneity.
Additional publications
Ahmed, A., Dhull, S., and Kent, R. (2022), "Non-audit services and auditor independence in stable and unstable economic conditions", Managerial Auditing Journal. (ABDC- A Ranked)
Gyapong, E., Daniel, G. and Ahmed, A. (2021), “Religiosity, Borrower Gender and Loan Losses in Microfinance Institutions: A Global Evidence”, Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting. (ABS- 3)
Gyapong, E., Ahmed, A., Nadeem, M. and Ntim, C. (2021), “Board gender diversity and corporate payout policy in Australian listed firms: The effect of ownership concentration”, Asia Pacific Journal of Management. (ABS- 3)
Ahmed, A., Atif, M. and Gyapong, E. (2021), “Boardroom gender diversity and CEO pay deviation: Australian evidence”, Accounting and Finance. (ABDC- A Ranked)
Ahmed, A. and Atif, M. (2021), “Board gender composition and debt financing”, International Journal of Finance and Economics. (ABS- 3)
Nadeem, M., Gyapong, E. and Ahmed, A. (2020), “Gender diversity and intellectual capital efficiency: A Stakeholder’s perspective”, Business Strategy and the Environment. (ABS- 3)
Guo, Y., Delaney, D. and Ahmed, A. (2020), “Is an auditor’s propensity to issue going concern opinions a valid measure of audit quality?”, Australian Accounting Review. (ABDC- B Ranked)
Hossain, M., Atif, M., Ahmed, A. and Mia, L. (2020), “Do LGBT workplace diversity policies create value for firms?”, Journal of Business Ethics. (ABS- 3)
Gyapong, E., Khaghaany, M. and Ahmed, A. (2020), “The asymmetric role of corporate governance in CEO pay determination: evidence from South Africa”, Applied Economics. (ABDC- A Ranked)
Nadeem, M., Ahmed, A. and Suleman, T. (2019), “Boardroom gender diversity, firm risk and profitability nexus: Are women risk-averse or risk moderators?”, International Review of Economic and Finance. (ABDC- A Ranked)
Farooque, M. B., Ahmed, A., and Nadeem, M. (2019), “Does female representation on corporate boards improve intellectual capital efficiency?”, Journal of Intellectual Capital. (Scimago- Q1)
Ahmed, A., Higgs, H., Ng, C. and Delaney, D. (2018), “Determinants of women representation on corporate boards: Evidence from Australia”, Accounting Research Journal. (ABDC- B Ranked)
Farooque, M. B., Ahmed, A., and Nadeem, M. (2018), “Sustainability reporter classification matrix: explaining variations in disclosure quality”, Meditari Accounting Research. (ABDC- A Ranked)
Ahmed, A., Monem, R., Delaney, D. and Ng, C. (2017), “Gender diversity in corporate boards and continuous disclosure”, Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics. (ABDC- A Ranked)
Ahmed, A. and Ali, S. (2017), “Does board gender diversity affect stock liquidity?”, Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics. (ABDC- A Ranked)
Ahmed, A., Ng, C. and Delaney, D. (2015), “Women on corporate boards and an incidence of receiving a ‘strike’ on the remuneration report”, Corporate Ownership and Control. (ABDC- B Ranked)