Since CERCLA's legislation in the United States, extending the liability to banks in case of an environmental damage has been the main concern of many studies. Most of them show that this form of regulation cannot reach its two main objectives because it is not possible to simultaneously improve...

Financial constraints have been found to play an important role on various aspects of firmbehavior. Yet, their effects on firm survival have been largely neglected. We use a panel of9420 newly established UK firms over the period 1997-2002 to study the effects offinancial variables on firms´...

We study conditions under which legal sanctions may lead to an efficient selection of heterogeneous investment projects. The bankruptcy code is a "primitive creditor system" and financial distress leads to an arbitration between private agreement and costly formal bankruptcy. We consider a...

This paper focuses on a new concern in the small firm’s literature, namely what makes a small firm stay in business for a long time. It reflects a change in economic policy, away from an emphasis on volume of start-ups to an emphasis on quality of start-ups. The basic hypothesis is that...

Policy efforts to revitalise entrepreneurship and investment in Spain are key to generating growth and new jobs. The government has a substantial reform program to make it easier to do business in Spain, which should in some cases be deepened. Boosting economic growth requires a new generation...

This paper examines the phenomenon of management-initiated, court-supervised reorganization of companies in U.S. bankruptcy court. The proposed in-court persuasion mechanism reconciles excessive reorganizations of non-viable companies (and subsequent repeat failures) with management-initiated...

We propose a general class of flexible models for longitudinal data with special emphasis on discrete-time survival data. The model is a finite mixture model where the subjects are allowed to move between components through time. The time-varying probability of component memberships is modeled...

The basic hypothesis is that flexibility enhances the long run prospects of the small firm. This is explored by examining precipitating causes of organisational change and their consequential adjustments. The study uses primary source data from mature small firms in Scotland. New measures of...

The adequacy of creditor protection is an on-going issue in corporate law. The traditional vulnerability of creditors can be traced to an entity theory of the corporation, coupled with limited liability. Creditor vulnerability is exacerbated by the existence of the corporate group, which has...

Using a unique dataset provided by Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), we relate 51 governance provisions to firm operating performance as proxied by return on assets and return on equity. We identify six corporate governance provisions that are significantly and positively linked to...