Enron's collapse is generally viewed as a morality tale - the natural result of managerial greed, a clueless board, and feckless gatekeepers. But none of these aspects of the story clearly distinguishes Enron from other major firms during the bubble era of the late 90s. This material identifies...

The 2007-2008 financial crisis demonstrated both the responsibilities that central bankers, alongside other actors, bear for turbulences of this kind as well as how economics can be used to provide central bankers and governments with the understanding and tools that they need to prevent the...

Over the next decade, governments around the world will invest massively in new projects, aiming at closing the long-identified infrastructure gap, to sustain economic and social development, and to recover from recent adverse shocks. This paper examines this topic from two perspectives: (i) how...

This paper investigates the financing options available to the public Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Jordan. By referring to the extant literature as well as to the legislative framework in Jordan, a quantitative research instrument is designed for collecting data over five years...

In this paper, we investigate the political determinants of the cost of equity using a unique data set of 236 firms privatized between 1987 and 2006 in 38 countries. We find robust evidence that the cost of equity is increasing in government ownership. We also show that the cost of equity is...

One of the main aims of China's 12th Five-Year Program, which covers the period 2011-15, is to make Chinese industry more competitive. In order to achieve this, six key sectors have been designated for merger and restructuring, while seven have been designated for the creation of strategic new...

The International Accounting Standards Board and the Financial Accounting Standards Board are working together to require that the present value of future lease payments for most leases currently classified as operating leases be recorded on lessees' balance sheets as both an asset and a...

This Article reports results of an empirical study that suggests that the current economic crisis has changed managerial behavior in the US in a way that may impede economic recovery. The study finds a strong, statistically significant and economically meaningful, positive correlation between...

Government often faces decisions, which concern choosing between projects carrying different risk level and timing of cash flows. For calculating government real estate investment discount rate, we can apply social opportunity cost approach and derived from that the capital asset pricing model...

We posit that firms with valuable real options have higher demand for cash and liquid assets and propose a simple procedure for identifying firms with valuable real options. Our procedure assumes that, all else being equal, a firm's real options are more valuable when their underlying volatility...