This study investigates the relationship between institutional ownership and dividend payout behavior of the firm in Germany. Using a propensity scoring method estimator to control for endogeneity problems, we find evidence that neither institutional ownership nor bank control is statistically...

The introduction of the 2006 Norwegian shareholder income tax was announced in advance, and it increased top marginal tax rates on individual dividend income from zero to 28 percent. We document strong timing effects on dividend payout on a large panel of non-listed corporations, with a surge of...

This study examines the relation between corporate governance practices measured by Transparency Disclosure Index (TDI) and dividend policy in Poland. Our empirical approach, constructs measures of the quality of the corporate governance for 110 non-financial companies listed on Warsaw Stock...

Entrepreneurial high-technology start-up firms usually need equity in order to finance their research, product development, and in particular growth opportunities due to new ideas and innovation. In an advanced stage they often require even larger financial resources and may raise equity by...

Around the world (with the U.S. and U.K. as exceptions) concentrated ownership structures and controlling shareholders are predominant even among listed firms. We provide novel empirical evidence how such controlling shareholders, in particular founding families, affect payout policy decisions....

Executive Stock Option Programs (SOPs) have become the dominant compensation instrument for top-management in recent years. The incentive effects of an SOP both with respect to corporate investment and financing decisions critically depend on the design of the SOP. A specific problem in...

Our study provides evidence on the share price reactions to the announcement of equity issues inGermany, where capital market is characterized by institutional features distinct from the U.S. market.German seasoned equity issues yield a positive market reaction which contrasts to the significant...

Since the equity premium as well as the risk-free rate puzzle question the concepts centralto financial and economic modeling, we apply behavioral decision theory to asset pricing in view ofsolving these puzzles. U.S. stock market data for the period 1960-2003 and German stock marketdata for the...

Die Finanztheorie betrachtet in den letzten Jahren verstärkt die Bedeutung institutionellerRahmenbedingungen bei der Gestaltung von Finanzierungsverträgen in verschiedenenLändern. In diesem Kontext vergleicht das vorliegende Papier unterschiedliche, für denangelsächsischen und deutschen...

This paper documents a relation between the shareholder base and payout policy. Consistentwith the idea that the shareholder base is related to the cost of external financing we find thatfirms with small shareholder bases have lower payout levels and maintain higher cash holdingsthan firms with...