This paper reopens the debate on why firms pay lower dividends in the stakeholder-oriented governance regimes of Continental Europe than in the market-oriented Anglo-American world. Previous studies observe the concentrated ownership structures of Continental European firms, and infer that in...

We test the signaling and wealth transfer hypotheses around the announcement of share repurchases using a recent and larger sample of data than previously examined while employing a methodology designed to enhance the power of our tests. Disentangling the wealth transfer and signaling hypotheses...

In a lot of countries, not only one but several sets of accounts have to be prepared and disclosed by (holding) companies. This paper inquires into possibly different economic functions of these sets of accounts by looking at the German dual financial reporting system, in which company (single)...

This paper examines how the provision of venture capital to small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) is influenced by the ownership structure of the venture capital provider. We introduce a new and unique dataset from the Japanese venture capital market, comprising data on investment and venture...

Using the 2003 reduction in dividend tax rates to identify an exogenous change in the after-tax value of dividends to shareholders, we test whether stock holdings among company executives is an important determinant of payout policy. We have three primary findings. First, we find that when top...

Research in behavioral corporate finance takes two distinct approaches. The first emphasizes that investors are less than fully rational. It views managerial financing and investment decisions as rational responses to securities market mispricing. The second approach emphasizes that managers are...

We survey 401 financial executives, and conduct in-depth interviews with an additional 20, to determine the key factors that drive decisions related to performance measurements and voluntary disclosure. The majority of firms view earnings, especially EPS, as the key metric for an external...

We examine competing agency theory and managerial power hypotheses on the role of Equity-Based Compensation (EBC) in the UK. Our study covers a unique sample of some 61 old and new economy firms over the 1997-2001 period. Despite the fact that new economy firms award much higher levels of EBC as...

We propose an explanation for the disappearing dividend phenomenon: the decline in the information content of dividend announcements. This reduces the propensity of firms to pay or increase dividends, since dividends are costly. The decline in the information content of dividend, is partly...

This paper introduces an analysis of the impact of Legality on the exiting of venture capital investments. We consider a sample of 468 venture-backed companies from 12 Asia-Pacific countries, and these countries' venture capitalists' investments in US-based entrepreneurial firms. The data...