Franchising is an important form of organizational control. Possible benefits of franchising include its ability to reduce agency costs that increase with costly monitoring, and provide incentives for the use of local information by onsite managers. However, these benefits may come at a cost, as...

Performance improvements subsequent to the implementation of a pay-for-performance plan may result either because more productive employees self-select into the firm (selection effect) and/or because employees allocate more effort to learn how to perform their tasks better (effort effect). We...

In the real world, where market imperfections such as taxes, agency costs, and information heterogeneity exist, the possibility arises that dividends may affect the value of the firm. As a result, dividend policy is an important topic faced by corporate financial managers and an important factor...

Many lodging companies now find themselves in a challenging position. They are finding it more difficult to attract capital as the industry's growth begins to stabilize due to the inherent cycles and the onset of supply growth. Companies seeking growth and access to public financing must...

The results presented in this paper show that integrative financial and operating measures of liquidity provide investors and creditors with additional information beyond that provided by static measures of short-term liquidity such as the current and quick ratios. Analyzing a sample of...

Stock index futures and program trading are among the most important financial market innovations of the 1980s. This chapter surveys the literature and provides an overview of the somewhat controversial area of index arbitrage. We begin with a description of how index futures work, how they...