This paper investigates the stock returns and volatility size effects for firm performance in the Taiwan tourism industry, especially the impacts arising from the tourism policy reform that allowed mainland Chinese tourists to travel to Taiwan. Four conditional univariate GARCH models are used...

This study investigates whether the capital market values the efficiency of firms. After tracing stock returns and efficiency changes of 399 listed insurance firms in 52 countries during the 2002-2008 period, the paper reports a positive and statistically significant relationship between profit...

We study the effect of loan portfolio focus vs. diversification on the return and the risk of 105 Italian banks over the period 1993-1999 using data on bank-by-bank exposures to different industries and sectors. We find that diversification is not guaranteed to produce superior performance...

While the signalling hypothesis has played a prominent role as the economic rationale associated with the initial public offering (IPO) underpricing puzzle (Welch, 1989), the empirical evidence on it has been mixed at best (Jegadeesh, Weinstein and Welch, 1993; Michaely and Shaw, 1994). This paper...

We examine the relationship between the number of bank relationships and firms' performance, evaluating possible differential effects related to firms' size. Our sample of firms from Italy includes many small firms, 99 percent of which are not listed and for which bank debt is a major source of...

We study empirically the effect of focus (specialization) vs. diversification on the return and the risk of banks using data from 105 Italian banks over the period 1993-1999. Specifically, we analyze the tradeoffs between (loan portfolio) focus and diversification using a unique data set that is...

We examine how state antitakeover laws affect bondholders and the cost of debt, and report four findings. First, bonds issued by firms incorporated in takeover friendly states have significantly higher at-issue yield spreads than bonds issued by firms in states with restrictive antitakeover...

In a sample of 26,395 firms from 40 countries, we find evidence in support of the dynamic trade-off theory for capital structure. Firms in every country of our sample partially adjust toward target capital structures. We show that legal, institutional, and other country-level factors explain...

Under the Basel II Accord, banks and other Authorized Deposit-taking Institutions (ADIs) are required to communicate their daily market risk estimates to the relevant national monetary authority at the beginning of each trading day, using one of a variety of Value-at-Risk (VaR) models to measure...

Stress and distress are unavoidable aspects of dealing with the vagaries of financial markets and financial advisers. The purpose of this paper is to try to reduce the discomfort in dealing with investment advisers, and to make the journey up and down the financial mountain a little less...