We use a historical experiment to test whether U.S. corporate defined benefit pension plans strategically use regulatory freedom to lower the reported value of pension liabilities, and hence required cash contributions. For some years, pension plans were required to estimate two liabilities -...

We study compliance of Indian firms to the 2013 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) regulation that mandates qualifying firms to spend 2 percent of the pre-tax profits on CSR. We demonstrate that the formation of CSR committees and the appointment of directors with relevant experience...

In the year 2009, then Chairman, Satyam Computers Limited (hereafter Satyam Computers), India confessed to financial irregularities leading to a series of grave felonies including financial and securities fraud of massive proportion. In his statement he confessed that the misstatement in the...

Over time, the development and refinement of corporate governance standards and recommendations have often been the consequence of corporate governance failures. Even if the collapse of Enron and the like, may not have been caused by corporate governance failures in a strict sense, there were...

Mandatory regulations that obligate the firms to spend on CSR activities can influence the corporate strategies. In this paper, we look at how mandatory CSR expenditure laws impact corporate risk-taking. Using covenants of the resource-based allocation to balance the stakeholder-shareholder...

This research aimed to identify the reality and obstacles of corporate social responsibility disclosure in firms subject to the regulations of the Syrian Commission on Financial Markets & Securities. To achieve the purpose of the study, data was collected for 29 firms registered in the...

Research Questions/Issues: Executive remuneration as a tool of resolving agency problems or as a sign of them has been discussed in the literature for decades. The discussion, however, has been focused on non-financial firms. Bankers’ remuneration has been overlooked until recently. Due to...

An important problem for governments around the world is how to deal with the balance of public finances. Especially during the last 30 years, public finances have come under considerable strain, due to high spending obligations, for example for pensions or health care. To deal with raising...

In the past decades many European countries implemented numerical fiscal rules in order to strengthen fiscal discipline on all levels of government. This development was intensified by the financial crisis in 2008. Although plenty of research points to the discipline-enhancing effect of these...

In mid-September 2008, a global financial crisis erupted which was followed by the most serious worldwide economic recession for decades. As in many other regions of the world, governments in the euro area stepped in with a wide range of emergency measures to stabilise the financial sector and...