We study the simultaneous choice of investment, debt financing and liquidity for a large sample of US corporates between 1980 and 2014. We partition the sample according to the firms' financial constraints and their needs to hedge against future shortfalls in operating income. In contrast to...

The current literature on firm ownership around the world shows that concentrated ownership with only one or a few controlling owners is common, especially in many European and Asian countries. The dispersed ownership has proven to be uncommon and even countries with supposed dispersed ownership...

We test one of the main predictions of the financial flexibility paradigm that expectations about future firm-specific shocks affect the firm's leverage. We extract the expectations of small and large future shocks from the market prices of equity options. We find that expectations for future...

This paper evaluates the importance of building a composite metric of financial soundness for the private corporate sector in Colombia. Instead of relying on the individual and sometimes restrictive financial ratio analysis approach, the purpose of this document is to provide a single metric...

The legal environment is one important determinant of corporate governance. However, within legal families, also cultural differences can explain the level of corporate governance to some extent. We analyze this relationship for the case of Switzerland. Swiss firms are mainly located in two...

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 the...

Competition law compliance has become increasingly important in the banking industry as the number of infringements and the associated fines imposed by the European Commission are rising. This article shows that not only governments and regulators, but also shareholders and managers, should be...

This paper attempts to make of the standard incremental cash flow model (SICFM) a functional vehicle for coping with conflicts of interest. After outlining the model, residual rights to cash flows are linked to residual risks. Then, the underlying information sets to cash flows are brought to...

This paper sets forth another contribution to the long standing debate over cost of capital, firstly by introducing a multiplicative model that translates the inner structure of the weighted average cost of capital rate and, secondly, adjusting such rate for governance risk. The conventional...

This paper introduces a cash flow model to budget and monitor distinctive matters usually arising in corporate governance. By enlarging the standard cash flow model widely used in Finance, and avoiding some of its downsides, it sets up a composite of cash flows called governance slack, which...