This paper analyses the investment incentives given by contingent ownership structures that are prevalent in joint ventures. We consider a variation of the standard hold-up problem where two parties make relationship-specific investments sequentially in order to generate a joint surplus in the...

This paper provides a theory of venture capital financing based on the complementarity between the financing and advising roles of venture capitalists. We examine the interaction between the staging of investment that characterizes young firms with a high growth potential and the double-sided...

Economic development implies that the efficiency of firms in developing countries is approaching that of firms in advanced economies. We examine the extent of this convergence in the Czech Republic and Russia, economies that represent alternative models of implementing development policies,...

This paper studies the impact of bank mergers on firm-bank lending relationships using information from individual loan contracts in Belgium. We analyse the effects of bank mergers on the probability of borrowers maintaining their lending relationships and on their ability to continue tapping...

Political struggles between the emerging European liberal states and the Catholic church in the 18th and 19th centuries provoked the formation of highly oppositional labour movements, resulting in Catholic countries having conflictual labour relations until the present. Based on the premise that...

This paper examines bond and syndicated bank finance in the Euromarkets. It uses a comprehensive data bank on Euromarkets to evaluate alternative theories of financial intermediation. A model is estimated that provides a good description of firms' choice of finance. The paper concludes that...

Construction companies face threats from competition, the need to adapt to modern technology, and changes in customer expectations. These issues require efficient risk management techniques. However, construction companies are late adopters of total quality management, one of the major risk...

Due to its known weaknesses Value at Risk (VaR) has been modified to have a better market risk measurement model. 2007-2008 global financial crisis has increased the necessity to incorporate market liquidity into widely used models. This is to raise the required regulatory capital for trading...

We examine the strong cycles in the number of initial public offerings (IPOs) and in the average initial returns realized by investors who participated in the IPOs. At the aggregate level, initial returns are predictably related to past initial returns and also to future IPO volume from...

Innovative new ventures fail if they cannot attract resources needed to commercialise new ideas and inventions. Obtaining external resources is a central issue for nascent entrepreneurs - people who are in the process of starting new ventures. We argue in this paper that, a way to deal with this...