Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of macroeconomic factors on capital structure decisions of emerging firms. Design/methodology/approach – A panel data covering a period from 1990 to 2006 for 34 emerging market countries were analyzed using the seemingly unrelated...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of heterogeneous expectations on the equilibrium value of a risky asset in a capital market populated by investors that choose mean‐variance efficient portfolios. Design/methodology/approach – A single‐period, discrete‐time...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the cost efficiency of banks operating in two “non‐core” EU countries, Portugal and Spain, over a number of years. Specifically, the paper aims to examine the extent to which banks' efficiency is influenced by their portfolio...

Purpose – The random walk forecast of exchange rate serves as a standard benchmark for forecast comparison. The purpose of this paper is to assess whether this benchmark is unbiased and directionally accurate under symmetric loss. The focus is on the random walk forecasts of the dollar/euro...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate dividend policy decisions in developing countries through studying Jordanian non‐financial firms. It aims to highlight the issue of dividend policy and the behaviour of dividends in Jordan as an emerging market....

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reinvestigate the performance of common stock returns with respect to two popularly known firm level characteristics: size and book‐to‐market ratio. Design/methodology/approach – All of New York Stock Exchange, American Stock Exchange, and...

Purpose – Some members of Congress in the USA have expressed serious concern that endowment spending rates of major American universities are too low. The purpose of this paper is to derive optimal spending rates and compare them with actual rates to determine if this concern is warranted....

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the hypothesis that a central bank's asymmetric preferences are able to explain inflation rate in a developing country. In addition, it seeks to help comprehend movements of inflation rate in Jordan and to understand Central Bank of Jordan...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of ownership structure and corporate governance on capital structure decisions of firms on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE). Design/methodology/approach – To analyze the impact of ownership structure and corporate governance on...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the time‐varying risk return relationship and the persistence of shocks to volatility within GARCH framework both in developed and emerging markets. Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses nonlinear ARCH and GARCH‐family models...