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...

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...

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...