This paper examines the effects of different corporate governance mechanisms on the cost of debt for large European firms and documents a novel interaction effect between shareholder rights and disclosure. Improved disclosure leads to a lower credit spread only if shareholder rights are low. A...

This paper develops the concept of CSR reputation (CSRR) both theoretically and empirically. The first part examines the literature on CSR reputation extensively in an attempt to develop both a qualitative and a quantitative interpretation to measure CSR reputation. A sample of 2447 firms...

In this paper we derive a general formula for the cost of capital of government's claim (rg). Given our valuation framework that distinguishes three claimholders-equity holders, debt holders and government-we show for the models used in Myers (1974), Miles and Ezzell (1980) and Harris and...

This paper examines which bidder, deal and target characteristics significantly affect the payment method choice in Dutch mergers and acquisitions. The final data sample consists of 227 mergers and acquisitions announced during the 10-year period between January 1996 and December 2005 by public...

To an increasing degree, companies are interested in the separate value of intangible assets. The need for separate valuation partly arises from new international accounting standards of the International Accounting Standards Board. Under certain conditions, these accounting standards allow the...

This paper examines the relation between the quality of corporate governance and the cost of debt. This study is based on the idea that debt holders take a firm's corporate governance into account when estimating its default risk. A higher quality would imply a lower cost of debt. The...

We examine the relation between the quality of corporate governance and the value of excess cash for large European firms (FTSEurofirst 300 Index). We use Deminor ratings for Shareholder rights, Takeover defences, Disclosure and Board as proxies for the quality of corporate governance. We find...

This paper studies the extent of feedback trading at the style level by hedge funds from both a positive and a normative perspective. We show that hedge funds continuously adjust their exposure to different risk factors conditional on the recent performance of these styles. The majority of funds...

This paper studies the level, determinants, and implications of the factor timing ability of hedge fund managers. We find that approximately 30% of hedge funds display factor timing ability on at least one factor, concentrated especially at the market, size, and bond factors. Better factor...

Despite a vast literature on the capital structure of the firm there still is a big gap between theory and practice. Starting with the seminal work by Modigliani amp; Miller, much attention has been paid to the optimality of capital structure from the shareholders' point of view. Over the last...