This paper analyzes the interplay between shareholder loans and earnings smoothing in German private corporations. Shareholders who grant loans have a dual stakeholder role, being both equity holders and creditors. Those loans could be lost, because bankruptcy law requires their subordination in...

There is hardly any evidence on earnings properties of co-operatives for which profit maximisation is not a primary goal. We find that cooperatives in Germany exhibit higher levels of timely loss recognition when they have more members(owners), when they pursue charitable objectives, and when...