PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on stock market liquidity, while taking into account the depth and tightness dimensions.Design/methodology/approachThe author used a panel data regression on stock market dataset, representing 314 listed firms operating in six Middle East and North African (MENA) countries from February to May 2020.FindingsThe regression results on the overall sample indicate that the liquidity related to the depth measure was positively correlated with the growth in the confirmed number of cases and deaths and stringency index. Moreover, the market depth was positively related to the confirmed cases of COVID-19. The results also indicate that the liquidity of small cap and big cap firms was significantly impacted by the confirmed number of cases, while the stringency index is only significant for the liquidity depth measure. Moreover, the results regarding sectors and country level analysis confirmed that COVID-19 had a significant and negative impact of stock market liquidity.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper confirms that the global coronavirus pandemic has decreased the stock market liquidity in terms of both the depth and the tightness dimensions.Originality/valueWhile most empirical papers focused on the impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic on stock market returns, this paper investigated liquidity chock at firm level in the MENA region using both tightness and depth dimensions.

The purpose of this research is to investigate whether there is an optimal cash holding ratio, in which firm’s performance can be maximized. The threshold regression model is applied to test the threshold effect of the cash holding ratio on firm’s performance of 306 non-financial companies listed on the Vietnam stock exchange market during the period of 2008–2017. Experimental results showed that a single-threshold effect exists between the ratio of cash holding and company’s performance. A proportion of cash holding within a threshold of 9.93% can contribute to improvement of the company’s efficiency. The coefficient is positive but tends to decrease when the cash holding ratio passes the 9.93% check point, implying that an increase in cash holdings ratio will continue to diminishment of efficiency eventually. Therefore, the relationship between cash holding ratio and firm’s performance is nonlinear. From this result, this paper provides policy implications for non-financial companies listed on the Vietnam stock exchange market in determining the proportion of cash holding flexibly. In detail, non-financial companies listed on the Vietnam stock exchange market should not keep the cash holding ratio over 9.93%. To ensure and enhance the company’s performance, the optimal range of cash holding ratios should be below 9.93%.

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Audit fees and audit quality have received the attention of stakeholders, clients, audit firms, and third parties. Each subject has its own opinion on determining influencing factors and their relationship. This study aims to investigate the determining factors of audit fees and audit quality in Vietnam. Using random data collection, a questionnaire was created on Google forms and sent to auditors from the 4th quarter of 2020 to the end of the 1st quarter of 2021. 267 valid auditors’ responses in 28 audit firms were used for data analysis. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to determine relationships between observed variables and factors. The measurement model and recommended hypotheses were confirmed by structural equation modeling (SEM) using SPSS 26 and AMOS 26. The study results show that contract types and audit complexity, audit firms’ reputation, size, and risk significantly impact audit fees and audit quality. In addition, the specialization of the audit firms does not have a positive effect on audit quality but on audit fees. The audit tenure has no statistical impact on audit fees and audit quality. Notably, audit fees statistically affected audit quality. Several implications can be applied, such as increasing the firm size, performing the procedures in response to audit risk, separating audit contract types, and determining the complexity of audit projects and specialties.