Faculty of Management, Law and Social Sciences Assessment Information Form DEPARTMENT Accounting, Finance and Economics MODULE TITLE Empirical Methods in Accounting and Finance MODULE CODE AFE6014-B and AFE6014-O TYPE OF ASSESSMENT Individual Coursework (50%) SUBMISSION DATE Bradford: Wednesday 6 th December 2023 15:00 Oman: TBA 1. Background context Corporate financing research has flourished since the infamous proposition of capital structure irrelevance by Modigliani and Miller (1958). Significant progress has been made to understand the determinants of financing choice, which has resulted in voluminous empirical evidence that tested various capital structure theories such as agency theory (Jensen, 1986), trade-off theory and pecking order theory (Shyam-Sunder and Myers, 1999). In essence, the theories attempted to explain factors that could plausibly influence the use of debt (i.e., leverage) in corporate financing. Over the years, a large number of studies have documented empirical evidence on various number of factors which are examined from multiple perspectives: cross-countries comparison (e.g., Rajan and Zingales, 1995; Frank and Goyal, 2009), market timing (e.g., Welch, 2004), product market (e.g., Campello, 2006), leases (e.g., Graham, Lemmon and Schallheim, 1998; Dzolkarnaini, 2009), microfinance (e.g., Bogan, 2012; Shettima and Dzolkarnaini, 2023), to cite several areas as examples. More specifically, based on prior works related to corporate governance (e.g., Bhagat and Bolton, 2008; Morellec, Nikolov and Schurhoff, 2012; Minhat and Dzolkarnaini, 2016; Shettima and Dzolkarnaini, 2018), in this coursework, you are expected to empirically examine the relation between a firm's leverage with CEO ownership and board structure. Can UK CEO ownership and board structure explain a firm's leverage level? 2. Data Your data file (in Excel) is already provided and can be downloaded from Canvas. It contains a sample of UK publicly listed firms in the years 2003-2011. You MUST work on this data file. You shall not import or have any additional data taken elsewhere. You are free to use/manipulate/expand the provided data as you like to suit your empirical work as long as you are using original data provided in this Excel file. 3. Reports requirement (1) A brief literature review leading to establishment of research question(s) or hypotheses. (35%, 780 words) You need to give prediction/research question based on the existing literature. You should find more related literature to support your prediction/research question. 2 | P a g e University of Bradford, Faculty of Management, Law and Social Sciences 2023/24 (2) Briefly describe the research method you intend to employ. (20%, 450 words) This should include: the stated empirical model, dependent variable, independent variables and control variables. (3) Demonstrate empirical results and discuss the findings. (25%, 550 words) You must employ proper model(s)/method(s) you learn from this module. Results should be presented in well-organised table(s).  Do not simply copy the original output from EViews or any other software.  Look at journal papers on how they present table(s)! (4) Provide conclusion and briefly discuss the limitation(s) of your work. (10%, 220 words). (5) Presentation and references (10%) The total length of this coursework should be around 2,000 words (± 10% is acceptable), excluding references, tables, figures and appendices. All tables and figures that are required as part of your analysis must be incorporated in the relevant section(s) (no word count). You must submit all evidence of data analysis and statistical outputs. These can be appended after References (no word count) or you can upload separate file in Excel (no word count). Please combine everything in a single file rather than submitting too many files. Ease of following your outputs will help me to understand your empirical works.