In this paper I examine the relationship between the strength of creditor rights, their enforcement, corporate governance and corporate dividend payout in a sample of 281 emerging market firms. I show that the outcome model of dividends, which states that corporate dividend payout increases in...

Reliable measures of body composition are essential in order to develop effective policies to tackle the costs of obesity. To date the lack of an acceptable gold-standard for measuring fatness has made it difficult to evaluate alternative measures of obesity. In this paper we draw on work in...

Purpose – This article highlights the gap between the legal responsibilities and the practice of pension fund trustees in Ireland. Design/methodology/approach – The paper relies on primary and secondary data analysis of trustee practice and enforcement cases to highlight the gap between law...

In this paper, I show that “investable premia” are greatest for transparent, well-governed firms. I find that single-class share investable firms and better-governed firms reap the largest valuation gains from becoming investable. Dual-class share firms do gain from becoming investable, but...

In a sample of 22,374 firms from 35 countries, we examine the role of creditor rights, shareholder rights, and corporate governance in determining corporate dividend policy. We find that, while all three variables play a significant role in determining both the likelihood and the dividend...

This paper uses data on 9 year old Irish children to examine the determinants of mathematical achievement among young children. We find that boys perform better in maths than girls and that this gender gap is driven by differences at the top of the achievement distribution. While there is no...

In a campaign spending contest model, this paper investigates whether the sources of incumbency advantage are able to generate the observed pattern of campaign spending and incumbent re-election rates in US elections and assesses the degree to which campaign finance reform can mitigate the...

This paper analyses the incentives of incumbent firms to form a first-mover RJV when faced with possible entry. If entry is accommodated, firms’ relative profits under R&D competition and RJV formation depend on R&D spillovers and firms’ R&D efficiency. RJV formation may make entry...

In this paper I examine the relationship between individual corporate governance provisions and corporate dividend payout. Using a sample of 220 firms from 21 emerging market countries, I show that dividend payout is an outcome of strong corporate governance. On closer inspection, I find that...