This paper examines the relationship between debt contract and the process of resolving financial distress, through either debt restructuring or bankruptcy procedure. It effectively justifies the popularity of the standard debt contract by demonstrating that the standard debt contract is the...

This paper examines alternative ways to prevent losses from bank insolvencies. It is widely viewed that transparency in reporting bank balance sheets is a key element in reducing such losses. It is, however, unclear just how such transparency would be achieved. Current approaches to avoiding...

After a brief review of option pricing theory, we introduce various methods proposed for extracting the statistical information implicit in options prices. Among the methods discussed are: lognormal Edgeworth expansions, cumulant expansions, Hermite polynomial expansions, nonparametric kernel...

We measure the loss potential of Hedge Funds by combining three market risk measures: VaR, Draw-Down and Time Under-The-Water. Calculations are carried out considering three different frameworks regarding Hedge Fund returns: i) Normality and time-independence, ii) Non-normality and time-...

One of the most enduring debates in economics is whether financial development causes economic growth or whether it is a consequence of increased economic activity. Little research into this question, however has used a true causality framework. This paper fills this lacuna by using...

An unstable macroeconomic environment is often regarded as detrimental to economic growth. Among the sources contributing to such instability, much of the blame has been assigned to political issues. This paper empirically tests for a causal and negative long-run relationship between political...

Agency costs are a cost of production, and firms that do a better job of minimizing these costs should exhibit better performance. This paper tests this hypothesis by calculating the performance elasticity of average employee hourly compensation for U.S. manufacturing firms. This elasticity...

Comment offrir à aux entreprises, en particulier les petites, une évaluation individualisée de leur qualité, leur permettant, d’une part, de mieux gérer leurs projets et leur développement et, d’autre part, de signaler leur qualité aux tiers, dont les banques. Le problème...

This article studies how equity ownership and corporate control were separated in the United States. Initially, railroads and industrial firms were tightly controlled by a few shareholders; this situation was altered in the 1890s by massive mergers and reorganizations, which allowed private...

In this article, we provide an interpretation for the voluntary independence requirements contained in the Italian Corporate Governance Code (Preda Code) checking them against a proxy for international best practice, the independence criteria provided in the EC Recommendation on non-executive...