Little is known about the relationship between family firms and their employees. This paper aims to close this gap. We distinguish between family management and family ownership as two dimensions of family firms and analyze their respective influence on downsizing. Our findings show that family...

The relationship between CEO pay and performance has been much analyzed in the management and economics literature. This study analyzes the structure of executive compensation in family and non-family firms. In line with predictions of agency theory, it is found that the share of base salary is...

Much of the industrialized world is undergoing a significant demographic shift, placing strain on public pension systems. Policymakers are responding with pension system reforms that put more weight on privately managed retirement funds. One concern with these changes is the effect on individual...

Information flows across international financial markets typically occur within hours, making volatility spillover appear contemporaneous in daily data. Such simultaneous transmission of variances is featured by the stochastic volatility model developed in this paper, in contrast to usually...

The trade-off theory on capital structure is tested by modelling the capital structure target as the solution to a maximization problem. This solution maps asset volatility and loss given default to optimal leverage. By applying nonlinear structural equation modelling, these unobservable...

This paper presents insights on U.S. business cycle volatility since 1867 de- rived from diffusion indices. We employ a Bayesian dynamic factor model to obtain aggregate and sectoral economic activity indices. We find a remarkable increase in volatility across World War I, which is reversed...

The prominent role of monetary policy in the U.S. interwar depression has been conventional wisdom since Friedman and Schwartz [1963]. This paper presents evidence on both the surprise and the systematic components of monetary policy between 1929 and 1933. Doubts surrounding GDP estimates for...

We examine the relationship between CEO ownership and stock market performance. Firms in which the CEO voluntarily holds a considerable share of outstanding stocks outperform the market by more than 10% p.a. after controlling for traditional risk factors. The effect is most pronounced in firms...

We present a new way to model age-specific demographic variables with the example of age-specific mortality in the U.S., building on the Lee-Carter approach and extending it in several dimensions. We incorporate covariates and model their dynamics jointly with the latent variables underlying...

We present a new way to model age-specific demographic variables, using the example of age-specific mortality in the United States, building on the LeeCarter approach and extending it in several dimensions. We incorporate covariates and model their dynamics jointly with the latent variables...