مهدی صفری گرایلی

The present study aims to investigate the association between political connections and related-party transactions for the firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). Sample includes the 485 firm-year observations from companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange during the years 2013 to 2017 and research hypothesis was tested using multivariate regression model based on panel data.We find that political connections are negatively associated with related-party transactions. In other words, politically connected firms are less inclined to exercise opportunistic behaviours by related-party transactions in comparison to other firms. Moreover, additional analysis reveals that the negative relationship between political connections and related-party transactions is more pronounced in larger firms.Our findings not only extend the extant theoretical literature concerning the stock political economy in developing countries including emerging capital market of Iran, but also help investors, managers, capital market regulators, policy makers and accounting standard setters to make informed decisions.

Chief executive officers (CEO), as the central pillar directing companies at the capital market level, plays a critical role in making investment decisions to de-crease agency costs and maximize shareholders’ wealth; however, their psycho-logical attitudes and perceptions lead to different investment functions of these companies in a competitive market. Accordingly, this study aimed to detect the propositional arrays of the investment functions using Q analysis in order to identify the CEOs’ mental typology in distinguishing investment functions. The present study was carried out with the participation of 13 CEOs from Tehran Stock Exchange companies during a one-year period (2018-2019). The study encompassed two different phases. In the first phase, content analysis was used to identify the phrase Q of the CEOs’ investment functions. In the second phase, Q analysis was adopted to typify the CEOs’ investment functions, which was based on the subjective cognition of the target population and contributed to the development of the approaches in line with the research objectives. The results confirmed the existence of three mental patterns in the CEOs regarding the in-vestment functions in the capital market. These mental patterns were ‘investment function in stock market indices’ as the first mental pattern, ‘investment function in risk control’ as the second mental pattern, ‘strategic investment function’ as the third mental pat-tern. The study results revealed different types of investment functions among the CEOs’ of stock exchange companies and thus contributed to the development of financial theories from the perspective of CEOs’ cognition.

The efforts of the developers of capital market laws and regulations over the past years have been aimed at increasing the level of information transparency to create more symmetry between companies and shareholders so that they can be more attractive to investors to invest in the stock market. But given the interplay of individual characteristics of corporate decision-makers with the interests of shareholders and investors, it seems that focusing on behavioral functions in the area of promoting managerial ability can more effectively lead to increased protection of shareholder interests. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of management ability on the protection of investors based on the development of the theory of the devil's advocate. Therefore, the present study, using the structural equation modeling approach and partial least squares analysis (PLS), while fitting the model's desirability, examined the impact of management ability on protecting investors. In this study, in order to measure the in-field variable, ie protection of shareholders' interests, a researcher-made questionnaire was created through meta-analysis with the participation of 15 research experts. Then the criterion of Demirjan et al (2013) was used to measure managerial ability as an exogenous variable in partial least squares analysis. The researcher-made questionnaire was sent to 142 CEOs of companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange, and finally, after many follow-ups, 105 questionnaires were completed and returned and used as a final sample for analysis. After ensuring the acceptable fit of the measurement and structural models of the research, according to the theory of the devil's advocate, the results showed that the ability of management has a positive and significant effect on protecting the investors. Managerial ability, as one of the specialized decision-making capacities, puts the company on the path of effective interaction with stakeholders and provides the ground for investors to Protect in companies' priorities to gain their trust.