This paper empirically examines the underinvestment problem and the use of dividends to expropriate lenders' wealth. Rather than analyzing the market's reaction to potential wealthexpropriating events, a different aspect of potential conflicts of interest is addressed: do managers who control...

This study Investigates the influence of the type of investment opportunities facing a firm on its choice of capital structure. It is shown that the more discretionary investment opportunities a firm faces,the lower its financial leverage. Inclusion of other possible determinants of capital...

This paper empirically considers economies of scale that firms must reach to be considered viable ongoing entities. These are estimated from the selling prices of actual firms in two broad industries — service and manufacturing. For service firms, the minimum size is $10 million in annual...

Tender offers provide an ideal setting for the analysis of agency relationships since the best interests of the principal (target firm shareholders) and agent (target firm managers) are often in conflict. Moreover, the actions and stated rationale of target managers in resisting or not resisting...

This paper reviews the evolution of executive stock option plans and the parallel tax treatment to compare their relative economic importance. On the incentive side, if the option plans were the most efficient means to provide the appropriate managerial incentives, they would have been adopted...