This paper studies conservative debt policies, focusing on firms with no debt (zeroleverage)or with extremely low debt. Examining an unbalanced panel of U.K. firms,we show that debt conservatism is a common, persistent yet puzzling empiricalregularity: nearly 10% of U.K. firms have zero leverage...

Even 50 years after Modigliani/Miller’s irrelevance theorem, the basic question of how firmschoose their capital structure remains unclear. This survey paper aims at summarizing anddiscussing corresponding recent developments in empirical capital structure research, which,in our view, are...

This paper shows that illiquid growth opportunities crucially impact the agency costs of risky debt. If the value of these growth opportunities is sufficiently high, they reverse riskshifting incentives into risk-avoidance incentives, creating a new agency cost of debt.(...)

Purpose: We examine motives for hiring a non-family Chief FinancialOfficer (CFO) in family firms. We explore the perceptions of family firm ownerstowards external managers by analyzing how their goals relate to the employmentof a non-family CFO.Design/methodology/approach: Our study is based on...

Instrumente der Außenfinanzierung werden üblicherweise in Eigenkapital und Fremdkapital unterteilt. Die in der Finanzwirtschaft entwickelten Abgrenzungsmerkmale führen zu einer guten Charakterisierung verschiedener Finanzierungsinstrumente.Die Wahl des Merkmals "Rechtsstellung im Konkurs" als...

This paper uses firm-level data on 162 large Hungarian enterprises to analyse the relationship betweenownership structure and corporate performance in 1998 and 1999. Cross-sectional regressions are runfor each of these years using the return on assets (ROA) as the measure of performance. Both...

This paper develops a principal-agent model of financial contracting in which optimal contracts resemble a combination of debt and equity. When defaulting on debt, the firm is punished by disruption of external funding. Such contracts however, invite rivals to compete more aggressively to...

The current EU rules governing the solvency of insurance companies essentially base the required minimum equity capital on the volume of insurance business the companies write. Thus, no attempt is made to identify or quantify the central risks borne by insurance companies. In response to...