This paper analyzes the governance and performance of firms which, according to simplistic agency theory, should not be viable. These firms are fully or partially owned by a foundation which itself is not owned by natural or legal persons. Therefore, residual claimholders have restricted or no...

This study examines the exposure of microfinance institutions to liquidity, interest rate and foreign exchange (FX) risk. It builds on a manually collected set of data on the maturity structure of assets and liabilities of the 309 largest microfinance institutions (out of which 112 actually...

Around the world (with the U.S. and U.K. as exceptions) concentrated ownership structures and controlling shareholders are predominant even among listed firms. We provide novel empirical evidence how such controlling shareholders, in particular founding families, affect payout policy decisions....

We study the simultaneous choice of investment, debt financing and liquidity for a large sample of US corporates between 1980 and 2014. We partition the sample according to the firms' financial constraints and their needs to hedge against future shortfalls in operating income. In contrast to...

The current literature on firm ownership around the world shows that concentrated ownership with only one or a few controlling owners is common, especially in many European and Asian countries. The dispersed ownership has proven to be uncommon and even countries with supposed dispersed ownership...

Arguments for costs of capital requirements in the long run are based on trade-off theories of capital structure. This paper provides a critical assessment of these theories by studying how the optimal capital structure can be modified, when a firm uses the financial markets to alter its cash...

This paper investigated the driving force of diffusion in smart phone market by analysing usage of them and making their component model. Main findings are following four: 1) In Korea and Japan their average smart phones' traffic per user has been the world's highest level. But its diffusion...

Managers like to think well of themselves, and of the firms that employ them. However, positive illusions can bias a manager's evaluation of market outcomes, self-servingly crediting success on the superior quality of one's own product but blaming failure on the aggressive price of a...

High levels of net migration to the UK have contributed to growing cultural diversity, and researchers are turning their attention to the long-term effects of diversity on productivity. Yet little is known about these issues. This paper asks: what are the links between the composition of firms'...