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...

This paper investigates three capital structure decisions – leverage, debt maturity and the source of debt – in a simultaneous setting. Moreover, we investigate whether these choices are influenced by the involvement of banks in a firm. Our results based on a panel of Dutch firms show that...

Going public often creates an agency conflict between the owner-manager and minority shareholders. This problem is especially severe in countries with poor legal investor protection, such as France. We examine the controlling position of owner-managers in French IPO firms. We find that investors...

This paper examines whether the stock market valuation impact is consistent with subsequent operating performance of firms. We use data for equity rights offerings - the widely adopted flotation method in the Netherlands. We first examine the stock market announcement effect of rights issues and...

This paper examines the robustness of the results found by Douglas and Popova (2008). They examine the electricity forward premium in relation to gas storage inventories and find that, although electricity is not directly storable, electricity forward premiums are lower when gas storage...

According to uncovered interest rate Parity (UIP), the expected relative change in an exchange rate is equal to the difference between interest rates between the two currencies. Empirically, UIP is frequently rejected. In this paper, we examine whether exchange rates have at least any tendency...

The central question of this study involves the relation between the use of takeover defenses and IPO firm value. We report that management frequently uses takeover defenses before taking the firm public. The use of takeover defenses is primarily motivated by managerial entrenchment. IPO...

We develop an empirical test for Second-order Stochastic Dominance (SSD) efficiency of a given investment portfolio relative to all possible portfolios formed from a set of assets. Contrary to the Linear Programming test of Post, Thierry, 2003, Empirical tests for stochastic dominance...

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...