This study investigates the motives and valuation effects of share repurchase announcements of German firms during the 1998-2008 period, addressing the question why initial public offering (IPO) firms repurchase shares soon after going public. While our focus is on IPO firms, we also examine the...

We investigate the conditional performance of a sample of German equity mutual funds over the period from 1994 to 2003 using both the beta-pricing approach and the stochastic discount factor (SDF) framework. On average, mutual funds cannot generate excess returns relative to their benchmark that...

We analyze the zero-leverage phenomenon around the world. Countries with a common law system, high creditor protection, and a dividend imputation or dividend relief tax system exhibit the highest percentage of zero-leverage firms. The increasing prevalence of zero-leverage firms in all sample...