Abstract

This study investigates the effects of financial policy and firm specific characteristics on corporate performance. Panel data covering a period from 1990 to 2006 for 70 firms were analyzed. Pooled OLS, Fixed Effect Model and Generalized Method of Moment panel model were employed in the estimation and data were sourced from the annual report and financial statement of the sampled firms. The estimation of the dynamic panel-data results show that long-term debts, tangibility, corporate tax rate, dividend policy, financial and stock market development were all positively related with firms’ performance. Furthermore, the positive relationship between stock market development and ROA suggest that as stock market develops, various investment opportunities are opened to firms. Therefore, there is need to monitor the performance of these variables in order to stabilize and enhance performance of listed firms in Nigeria. In addition, the result shows that growth, size and foreign direct investment are negatively related with firms’ performance (ROA). In addition, the result indicates that higher income variability increases the risk that a firm may not be able to cover its interest payment, leading to higher expected costs of financial distress. This may leads to reduce their profitability. The results of the study generally support existing literature on the impact of financial policy on corporate performance.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.