We analyze the zero-leverage phenomenon around the world. Countries with a common law system, high creditor protection, and a dividend imputation or dividend relief tax system exhibit the highest percentage of zero-leverage firms. The increasing prevalence of zero-leverage firms in all sample...

Debt capital has traditionally been the most important source of external finance in the shipping industry. The access that shipping companies nowadays have to the capital markets provides them with a broader range of financing instruments. As such, this study investigates the determinants of...

The old and simple investment strategy “Sell in May and Go Away” (also referred to as the “Halloween effect”) enjoys an unbroken popularity. Recent studies suggest that the Halloween effect even strengthened rather than weakened since its first publication by Bouman and Jacobsen (2002)....

This book explores the revolutionary development of the theory of the firm over the past 35 years. Despite rapid progress in the field, new developments in the microeconomic and industrial organization literature have been relatively scant. This book attempts to redress the balance by providing...

The knowledge of risk factors that determine an industry's expected stock returns is important to assess whether this industry serves as a separate asset class. This study analyses the macroeconomic risk factors that drive expected stock returns in the shipping industry and its three sectors:...

This study examines whether shocks from macroeconomic variables or asymmetric effects are more suitable for explaining the time-varying volatility in the dry bulk and tanker freight markets or whether both effects should be incorporated simultaneously. Using Baltic Exchange indices during the...

This study compares the performance of different rebalancing strategies under realistic market conditions by reporting statistical significance levels. Our analysis is based on historical data from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany and comprises three different classes of...

Despite their high economic importance, academic research has granted KG funds only marginal attention. A main reason is the lack of reliable performance data due to non-observable market prices during the lifetime of a KG fund. In order to measure the performance of KG funds, we construct an...