Aircraft leasing represents a significant portion of the financial statements of airline firms. Accounting treatment of lease transactions is becoming more complicated as firms attempt to achieve off-balance-sheet outcomes vis a vis special purpose entities(SPC). Cross-border leasing involving...

The private equity business, a good complement to the public equity market and the debt market, has been playing an increasing role in China. However, there is no universal formula for doing this business. As an art rather than a science, it varies from country to country. After two decades of...

The concept of this thesis emerged from my own experience of mergers and acquisitions in which I had been involved over the past 20 years. Companies make acquisitions, mergers, or joint ventures for technology or geographical reasons, or to consolidate a market. The companies have to find a way...

Innovation has become the dominant economic idea of our time and has resulted in a proliferation of innovation-oriented rhetoric, and policies. There is a great need to understand and harness innovation, but it has proven to be as difficult to measure as it is to define. At present, the quest to...

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have proven their dynamism in West Africa. They are perceived by policy makers as an important reservoir for growth. The African Development Bank considers they represent over 90 % of business and provide about 50% of GDP and employment in Africa....

Japanese major alcoholic beverage companies, whose businesses are mainly the production and sale of beer products, stand at a strategic crossroads. There are several reasons: a slow decrease in the Japanese population, which leads to a smaller drinking population; diversification of customers'...

PIPEs (Private Investments in Public Equity) are unique in that they are negotiated privately between sophisticated investors and the public firm. As a result, the issue price deviates from the firm's stock price, often resulting in a substantial PIPE discount. However, only a limited set of...

This thesis consists of three chapters exploring predictability of stock returns. In the first chapter, I suggest a new approach to analysis of stock return predictability. Instead of relying on predictive regressions, I employ a state space framework. Acknowledging that expected returns and...

In the first chapter, I provide evidence that investment-specific technological change is a source of systematic risk. In contrast to neutral productivity shocks, the economy needs to invest to realize the benefits of innovations in investment technology. A positive shock to investment...

This paper examines the properties of accounting numbers using a real investment framework that predicts asymmetric timeliness of both investment and its outcomes (i.e. sales, earnings and operating cash flows) even in the absence of conservative accounting. In particular, I predict and find...