Einleitung: In der zweiten Hälfte der neunziger Jahre ist die Verbesserung der CorporateGovernance börsennotierter Gesellschaften zu einem intensiv diskutiertenThema geworden. Im Unterschied zu früheren Debatten, wie sie vor etwazwanzig Jahren anlässlich der Arbeit von Jensen/Meckling (1976)...

Recent empirical work shows evidence of a positive relationship between firm-specific corporate governance and firm valuation. Instead of looking at a single control mechanism, we use a broad corporate governance index and additional variables related to ownership structure, board...

Recent empirical work shows that a better legal environment leads to lowerexpected rates of return in an international cross-section of countries. Thispaper investigates whether differences in firm-specific corporate governancealso help to explain expected returns in a cross-section of firms...

In the past few years, corporate governance has become a popular area of discussionin continental Europe. Having been a topic of academic research for a longtime in the Anglo-Saxon literature, corporate governance has only recently movedfrom a special interest into all sections of the corporate...

We investigate the performance of a sample of German mutual equity funds overthe period from 1994 to 2003. Our general finding is that mutual funds, on average,hardly produce excess returns relative to their benchmark that are large enough tocover their expenses. This conclusion is drawn from a...

This paper investigates the impact of individual bank fundamental variables onstock market returns using data from a panel of 235 European banks from 1991to 2005. The sample period marks a significant transition in the European bankingsector, characterized by higher competition, lower profit...

This paper investigates the determinants of Swiss non-financial firms’ cash holdings overthe 1995 to 2004 period. The median Swiss firm holds almost twice as much cash andcash equivalents as the median UK or US firm. Our results indicate that there is a negativerelationship between asset...

This paper analyzes the determinants of the German corporate governance ratingrecently developed by Drobetz, Schillhofer, and Zimmermann (2004). We find anon- linear relationship between ownership concentration and the quality of firmlevelcorporate governance as measured by the rating. Firms...

We use a dynamic adjustment model and panel methodology to investigatethe determinants of a time- varying optimal capital structure. Because firmsmay temporarily deviate from their optimal capital structure in the presenceof adjustment costs, we also endogenize the adjustment process. In partic...

Im Rahmen einer Fragebogenuntersuchung werden die Determinanten derKapitalstrukturpolitik bzw. der Finanzierungsentscheidungen bei deutschen,österreichische n und schweizerischen börsennotierten Unternehmen untersucht.Die Ergebnisse decken sich weitgehend mit der Befragungsstudie vonGraham und...