We analyse whether family firms differ from non-family firms in terms of business segment and geographical diversification or the application of currency hedging instruments. This analysis is based on a unique dataset of 339 publicly listed companies (1,561 firm years) in the German Prime...

This paper analyzes how the predominant example of a controlling shareholder, i.e., the firms' founders and their families, influence payout policy. Using a panel dataset of 660 listed firms in the 1995 to 2006 period from Germany, we find that family firms exhibit a higher propensity and level...

We analyse to what extent the accrual anomaly is related to the choice of the accounting system as well as firm-level heterogeneity in corporate governance mechanisms. Using a unique dataset of listed German firms over the period 1995 to 2005 we first corroborate former results indicating that...

Recent research indicates that the majority of listed firms in Germany (and also in many other countries around the world) have a dominant owner rather than being widely-held. Hence, owner-dominated firms comprise an important subset of listed companies. This article introduces the concept of an...

This paper analyzes the impact of model complexity on the valuation of a project financed power plant along two dimensions: The NPV distribution and the expected cumulative default probability of the project. Model complexity is separated into forecast and simulation complexity. Thereby, we aim...

We address the question of whether hedge fund and private equity investments in public firms are motivated by corporate governance improvements. As opposed to traditional financial investors both HF and PE are likely to have the incentives to alleviate agency conflicts. However, against the...

We integrate liquidity risk measured by the weighted spread into a Value-at-Risk (VaR) framework. The weighted spread measure extracts liquidity costs by order size from the limit order book. We show that it is precise from a risk perspective in a wide range of clearly defined situations.Using a...

It is well-known from US-related studies that investors systematically overreact to accrual-based accounting information. We address the question to what extent this accrual anomaly is related to different accounting standards. We provide empirical evidence that the accrual anomaly is also...

Liquidity, the ease of trading an asset, strongly varies between different sizes of stock positions. We analyze this aspect using the Xetra Liquidity Measure (XLM), which calculates daily, weighted spread for impatient traders transacting against the limit order book. For this measure, we have...

Private equity funds and hedge funds are both alternative asset classes that are continuously growing in importance. Although they have different focuses, they share some characteristics. First of all, both have or allegedly have a significant impact on the economy as well as the financial...