Causal Nexus Between Ownership Structure, Dividend Policy and Financial Performance: A Bootstrap Panel Granger non-causality Analysis

Regarding the causality nexus between the various dimensions of corporate governance (ownership structure, dividend policy) and financial performance (return on equity, return on assets, Tobin’s Q), the empirical results are mixed. Therefore, this study tries to examine the existence and the direction of causal relationship between these major indicators in an emerging economy, namely Tunisia for a sample of 375 firm-years observations during the period 1996–2020. This study applies a bootstrap panel Granger non-causality test which takes into account cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity issues. Results show the existence of both unidirectional and bidirectional significant causal link between the pair of used variables. Overall, when comparing between Kónya and Dumitrescu and Hurlin approaches, the findings highlight and confirm the convergence of the direction of causality between all variables used in this study.