This paper shows that stock market contagion operates through a domino effect, where small crashes evolve into more severe crashes. Using a novel unifying framework we model the occurrence of local, regional and global crashes in terms of past occurrences of these different crashes and financial...

We examine fees on bonds issued by Japanese corporations during the 1994-2002 period. We relate fees to firms’ membership of bank-led (financial) keiretsu. For the full sample of firms, we establish a positive relation between fees and risk factors. Over time, we find that fees have increased...

The consequences of international accounting standards are likely to reach beyond the impact on financial statements. This paper demonstrates one of the economic implications of international standards. We focus on the impact of the IFRS regulation on preference shares (IAS 32) in the...

We measure the economic value of information derived from macroeconomic variables and from technical trading rules for emerging markets currency investments. Our analysis is based on a sample of 21 emerging markets with a floating exchange rate regime over the period 1997-2007 and explicitly...

This paper examines the effects of different corporate governance mechanisms on the cost of debt for large European firms and documents a novel interaction effect between shareholder rights and disclosure. Improved disclosure leads to a lower credit spread only if shareholder rights are low. A...

The dependence between asset returns varies. Its strength can become stronger or weaker. Also, its structure can change, for example, when asymmetries related to bull and bear markets become more or less pronounced. To analyze these different types of variations, we develop a model that...

Over the last decade, the going private market has experienced a considerable boom in size and also has become more interesting for private equity investors that are looking to partner with incumbent management. This offers managers the choice to take the firm private themselves in a traditional...

In this paper we present the results of an international survey among 313 CFOs on capital structure choice. We document several interesting insights on how theoretical concepts are being applied by professionals in the U.K., the Netherlands, Germany, and France and we directly compare our...

The state of the equity market, often referred to as a bull or a bear market, is of key importance for financial decisions and economic analyses. Its latent nature has led to several methods to identify past and current states of the market and forecast future states. These methods encompass...

We examine the relation between the quality of corporate governance and the value of excess cash for large European firms (FTSEurofirst 300 Index). We use Deminor ratings for Shareholder rights, Takeover defences, Disclosure and Board as proxies for the quality of corporate governance. We find...