This paper outlines the foundations of corporate governance.  The discussion includes a review on the modern corporation, transaction costs theory, agency costs theory, legal investor protection, investor protection by corporate governance and its various mechanisms, as well as an overview of...

<span style="font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">We analyze the doping behavior of heterogeneous athletes in an environment of private information. In a n-player strategic game, modeled as an all-pay auction, each athlete has private information about his actual physical ability and choses the amount of performance-enhancing drugs. The use of...</span>

We use the theory of abstract convexity to study adverse-selection principal-agent problems and two-sided matching problems, departing from much of the literature by not requiring quasilinear utility. We formulate and characterize a basic underlying implementation duality. We show how this...

Im Rahmen einer Fragebogenuntersuchung werden die Determinanten derKapitalstrukturpolitik bzw. der Finanzierungsentscheidungen bei deutschen,österreichische n und schweizerischen börsennotierten Unternehmen untersucht.Die Ergebnisse decken sich weitgehend mit der Befragungsstudie vonGraham und...

The question of whether the CEO should also serve as chairman of the board is one of themost hotly debated issues in the recent corporate governance discussion. While agencytheoreticarguments advocate a separation of decision and control functions, the empiricalevidence focusing on U.S....

I use a survey methodology to obtain consensus ratings of 64 Swiss company names. The survey evidence suggests that simple cognitive company name characteristics do affect the buy and sell decision of respondents. Furthermore, I find that respondents attribute positive stock performance rather...

This paper provides empirical evidence in favor of the hypothesis thatthe secular price increase in the 16th century is mainly caused by money supplydevelopments as the discovery of new mines in Latin America. First we reviewprice developments for several European countries over the 16th century...

This is the first empirical paper investigating a comprehensive sample of listed(i.e. publicly traded) private equity companies, covering 287 companies in thetime period 1986 to 2003. After imposing liquidity constraints, and aftercorrecting for non-surviving vehicles, we get a sample of 114...

The past decades witnessed a broad trend towards flatter organizations with less hierarchical layers. A reduction of the number of management levels in a corpora- tion can have both positive and negative effects on firm performance with the net effect being theoretically unclear ex ante. The...

We use a dynamic adjustment model and panel methodology to investigatethe determinants of a time- varying optimal capital structure. Because firmsmay temporarily deviate from their optimal capital structure in the presenceof adjustment costs, we also endogenize the adjustment process. In partic...