This study investigates how audit quality moderates the effect of financial performance indicators on the stock returns of Amman Stock Exchange-listed firms (ASE). The panel data analysis selected the data of 95 ASE-listed firms from 2013 through 2021. This analysis demonstrates a significant inverse relationship between a company's book value and its stock returns. A statistically negative relationship was observed between cash flow, dividends per share, and stock return. The empirical results of this study confirm the moderating influence of audit quality in the relationship between financial performance and stock return. Firstly, auditor's fees have a significant impact on the relationship between firm stock returns and EPS, BV, DPS, and cash flows (CFO). The size of the auditing firm moderates the relationship between company stock returns and EPS, DPS, and the CFO, but not with book value (BV). The auditor's opinion moderates the relationship between business stock returns and EPS, BV, and DPS but not the relationship between firm stock returns and cash flows (CFO). The study suggests that regulatory bodies like the Companies Control Department (CCD) and ASE should make sure that local audit firms in Jordan improve their audit quality to be on par with the Big 4 audit firms in order to improve their financial performance measures and stock returns.

This study investigates the dynamic relationship between a set of banking sector development indicators and interest rate volatility for 12 emerging market countries during the period of 1980-2019. For this purpose, the bounds testing within autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) methodology is employed. The empirical results reveal that the interest rate volatility has negative impacts on the majority of the banking sector development indicators which also play a significant role in dampening the banking sector development path in the long-run. These findings suggest that the banking sectors of emerging countries are vulnerable to interest rate risks. Thus, the results have important implications for policymakers to improve the banking system and to promote economic growth of emerging economies.