This paper argues that institutional investors may have a positive effect on stock prices. This effect realizes through different mechanisms: institutional investors reduce information asymmetries between firms and (other) investors, contribute to the liquidity of the company’s stock and...

The design of capital structure in quoted companies has received much attention in the academic literature. Using panel data from quoted as well as non quoted Belgian companies, this paper investigates not only the determinants of capital structure, but also the influence of a stock listing on...

Recent empirical research has stressed the importance of economy wide factors in the assessment of default risk, for instance for bond portfolios or portfolios of bank loans. Macroeconomic risk is essentially systematic, as it is difficult to reduce through diversification. Adequate forecasts of...

The bankruptcy prediction literature generally ignores corporate ownership and assumes companies are independent economic entities. In Continental Europe this latter assumption does not hold, due to the importance of business groups. Using a sample of mostly non-quoted Belgian medium and large...

Dit artikel stelt dat een governancesysteem noodzakelijkerwijs is gestoeld op zogenaamde “checks and balances”, dwz machtsevenwichten tussen diverse partijen. Gezien dergelijke evenwichten relatief fragiel zijn en kunnen worden verstoord door allerhande maatschappelijke en economische...

This paper reviews the theory and recent empirical studies on privatization, with a special focus on the efforts made in the case of China. Over the last decade, the Chinese government has initiated major privatizations in an attempt to promote more efficiency and improve the financial and...

This paper surveys capital structure theories based on product characteristics and the structure of input and output markets. In this manner, it extends the work of Harris and Raviv (1991). Simultaneously, we relate capital structure to decisions in the input and output markets, such as...

In this article, I discuss policy implications based on a study of the capital structure of business start-ups. Using a sample of 328 newly founded enterprises in Belgian manufacturing, it turned out that venture capital is barely used as a source of financing at the time of start-up. Also,...