*3.1. Data and Sample Collection*

Data includes the annually audited financial statements which can be collected from the website: https://vietstock.vn/. The companies selected for the sample are active non-financial companies, with full financial reporting for the period of 2008–2017. With this sampling method, data collected includes 306 non-financial companies operating in the 2008–2017 period. Consequently, the final dataset is a strongly balanced panel dataset, which includes 3060 firm-year observations of 306 companies (306 companies × 10 periods = 3060 observations).
