German firms pay out a lower proportion of their cash flows than UK and US firms.However, on a published profits basis, the pattern is reversed.Company law provisions and accounting policies account for these conflicting results.A partial adjustment model is used to estimate the implicit target...

We investigate patterns of abnormal stock performance around insider trades and option exercises on the Dutch market. Listed firms in the Netherlands have a long tradition of employing many anti-shareholder mechanisms limiting shareholders rights. Our results imply that insider transactions are...

Traditionally share price returns and their variance have been explained by factors linked to the operations of the company such as systematic risk, corporate size and P/E ratios or by factors related to the influence of the macro-economic environment. In these models, the institutional...

This study investigates the impact of corporate governance and product market competition on total factor productivity growth for two large samples of German and UK firms. In poorly performing UK firms, the presence of strong outside blockholders lead to substantial increases in productivity....

This paper analyses the control of Belgian listed companies. The analysis reveals that control of listed companies in Belgium is highly concentrated. Business groups, holding companies, and voting pacts, play an important role in bringing about this concentration. The main characteristics of the...

This study has analysed the share price reactions to changes in top management.A distinction was made among different types of CEO turnover: forced resignation, voluntary departures and age-related retirements.The announcement of a forced CEO resignation is hailed favourably by the market with a...

This paper examines the payout policies of UK firms listed on the London Stock Exchange during the 1990s.It complements the existing literature by analyzing the trends in both dividends and total payouts (including share repurchases).In a dynamic panel data regression setting, we relate target...