The Doing Business (DB) Project of the World Bank has a large impact on media, policy makers and private sector and could have a significant influence on future policies implementation. For these reasons it would be important to better evaluate the rank criteria and avoid the choice of...

We examine leverage decisions in the context of national culture over the 1996–2010 period. Cultural characteristics can explain capital structure decisions from emerging-markets cross-listings. The results show that firms from countries with high Individualism and Indulgence employ more debt....

Golden parachutes (GPs) have attracted substantial attention from investors and public officials for more than two decades. We find that GPs are associated with higher expected acquisition premiums and that this association is at least partly due to the effect of GPs on executive incentives....

For a large sample of 48 countries, we find robust evidence that strong creditor rights are associated with low long-term leverage across countries. We further find that strong creditor protection lowers long-term debt issuance, the extent to which investments are financed with long-term debt,...

Within the international affair, the role of the actors varies, while the forms of access to internal markets of the emergent states tend to structure under different forms. Among these, in the European normative context, one can refer to an opportunity for business development, form of...

Regulations treating in a diversified way different types of funded positions introduced over decades, do not take into consideration the increasing opportunities of financial innovation and regulatory arbitrage. These opportunities seem to significantly benefit the most sophisticated market...

The history of regulation in America is as old as the republic itself. Since colonial times, Americans have struggled with the conflict between the desire for individual freedom and economic growth, and the need for rules and structure in a civil society. The evolution of the United States from...

We empirically investigate whether increases in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) budget have an effect on firms’ compliance behavior with securities market rules. Our study uses a dataset on the SEC’s resources and its enforcement actions over a period beginning shortly...

Classified boards actually benefit firms that have low monitoring costs and greater needs for advisory services. Previous literature has emphasized the entrenchment effect of classified boards. However, we find that this adverse impact of classified boards can be offset or even superseded by the...

Environmental disclosure (ED) is now considered to be a ‘key’ medium through which to communicate a corporations ‘environmental’ performance to its stakeholders. The rapid growth of ‘Internet’ technology has created the ability for firms to ‘disseminate’ information to the...