Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to add to the existing literature by examining a number of hypotheses relating to the capital structure decision in relation to the firms’ size, namely by distinguishing among micro, small and medium firms. Design/methodology/approach - The paper examines...

The main objective of this paper is to investigate whether differences in institutional characteristics result in different capital structure determination among countries. First, we analyze the institutional setting in Greece compared with that of other countries. Second, we provide survey...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show that different methodologies may lead to different implications about the validity of the pecking order theory. Design/methodology/approach – Using data from Greek firms as a starting-point, the paper first investigates whether they follow the...

We investigate the capital structure determinants of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) using a sample of Greek and French firms. We address the following questions: Are the capital structure determinants of SMEs in the two countries driven by similar factors? Are potential differences...

Portfolio managers favor long-term investment horizons. Their performance is usually forecasted using either the arithmetic mean or the geometric mean. The harmonic mean is generally ignored as an instrument of financial and/or portfolio management. We examine the performance of the harmonic...

Purpose – We know that estimates of terminal value of long-term investment horizons are biased. Unbiased estimates exist only for investment horizon of one time-period. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a method based on the arithmetic mean in order to obtain unbiased estimates for the...

Purpose -The aim of this study is to isolate the firm characteristics that affect capital structure Design/methodology/approach -The investigation has been performed using panel data procedure for a sample of 129 Greek companies listed on the Athens Stock Exchange during 1997-2001. The number of...

Evidence on the asymmetric timeliness in the reporting of good and bad news follows the argument that accountants tend to use discretionary accruals to over-recognise bad news in order to be conservative. The Greek reporting framework, before the adoption of International Accounting Standards,...