Endowment warrants are long-term call options with an exercise price that is reduced whenever dividends are paid on the options' underlying shares so that over the decade-long life of the option the exercise price could fall to zero if anticipated share dividend growth occurs. This paper derives...

This paper investigates the determinants of credit risk in insurance companies in the U.S. and Europe. Consistent with recent results for non-financial firms in the U.S., we find that equity volatility is a major determinant and predictor of CDS spreads for both U.S. and European insurers, even...

This paper empirically investigates the cross-sectional properties of the dividend smoothing policies of 890 firms over a twenty-year time period in order to determine the extent to which important firm characteristics systematically alter the degree of dividend smoothing carried out by...

This paper provides a method for testing for regime differences when regimes are long-lasting. Standard testing procedures are generally inappropriate because regime persistence causes a spurious regression problem - a problem that has led to incorrect inference in a broad range of studies...