Determination of structure and correct calculation of a company's capital value is an essential; theoretical and practical problem for corporate finance. The proportion between the company's equity and borrowed capital determines the risk and profitability of the company and, consequently, the...

These are the presentation slides for the paper. We test whether and how equity overvaluation affects corporate financing decisions using an ex ante misvaluation measure that filters firm scale and growth prospects from market price. We find that equity issuance and total financing increase with...

In this paper we test whether the amount and/or quality of financial statement information affect the financial structure of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). We explore this issue for Belgian SMEs because there are important differences in disclosure and audit requirements among them....

Conditional conservatism has caused a controversy in recent literature in regards to whether it is rather driven by reporting demands originating from debt or equity markets. Extending the work of Ball/Shivakumar (2005), who found public companies to report conditionally more conservative than...

In 2008, Germany introduced an interest barrier which allows the deduction of interest only if a company's net interest expenditure does not exceed 30% of the company's EBITDA. The regulation aims at preventing excessive debt financing of companies resident in Germany and distinguishes neither...

In this paper, we examine how financial leverage and information quality interactively affect the equilibrium investment and effort decisions, therefore affect overall efficiency. We find that when the financial leverage is in an intermediate range, overall efficiency may decrease in information...

In contrast to the capital structure propositions in Modigliani and Miller (1958, 1963), most empirical research has not been able to find a positive association between stock returns and financial leverage. Several reasons have been proposed for this, including suggestions about omitted risk...

Previous studies show that, in common-law countries, the explanatory power of stock returns is higher using cash flows than earnings and accruals, while the opposite is true in code-law countries. Moreover, the literature has shown the existence of a country-specific effect motivated by...

We examine whether criminal records of CEOs and rank-and-file employees are associated with firms’ likelihood of bankruptcy and whether lenders adjust their required cost of debt accordingly. We use a nationwide sample of private firms and criminal registers covering all firm employees. We...

Compelling empirical evidence documenting a material effect of corporate taxes on leverage decisions is limited, in part because of difficulties in constructing an effective proxy for the firm's tax benefit of debt. We examine leverage decisions across taxable and nontaxable real estate firms...