This study examines the extent to which national culture and legal systems influence corporate governance practices. National culture is taken to be the customs and practices that are associated with a particular country. The meaning and derivation of national culture will be discussed further...

We analyze the relation between capital structure, ownership structure, and corporate value for a sample of 1,216 firms from 15 European countries. Our results stress two different conflicts of interest and show the differential role played by the mechanisms of corporate control depending on the...

The world stock markets are moving so rapidly towards globalization, and integration of local financial markets to international financial systems and institutions through cross borders transactions. The globalization phenomenon may be a blessing and enhance national economies, or may increase...

This paper examines the impact of multinational firms' increasingly blurred geographical and institutional boundaries on the nature and definition of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). It begins with a brief history of CSR, describes changes in the global corporation and the pressures...

We examine the relations between three dimensions of national culture and dividend policies of banks using a sample of banks from 51 countries over the period 1998-2007. In our main analysis, we employ three dimensions of Hofstede et al. (2010) and find that banks in high uncertainty avoidance,...

This study examines whether dividend payout, an internal corporate governance mechanism, is a substitute or an outcome of product market competition, an external corporate governance mechanism. The sample includes firms in six of the world's most prominent economies. We find that firms in more...

We examine the impact of political uncertainty on firms' payout policy. Using a large international sample across 35 countries over the period from year 1990 to 2008, we find that past dividend payers are more likely to terminate dividends and that non-payers are less likely to initiate...

There is a generalized conviction that variation in dividend yields is exclusively related to expected returns and not to expected dividend growth - e.g. Cochrane's presidential address (Cochrane (2011)). We show that this pattern, although valid for the aggregate stock market, is not true for...

We investigate the dividend smoothing behavior of firms using a large sample of firms covering 28 countries. Our results show that the levels of dividend smoothing in the firms vary substantially across countries. This finding confirms and extends the findings of previous research that the...

We use a new international setting to test and strengthen the identification of “target leverage hypothesis” in the payout policy literature. We conduct a quasi-natural experiment induced by staggered share repurchase legalization in 17 economies and analyze its influences on leverage...