Korea adopted Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD) in November 2002. Regulation FD, designed with a goal of levelling the playing field among market participants, has created considerable debate among practitioners and academics. This thesis examines the effect of Regulation FD on the Korean...

This thesis aims to add empirical evidence to the corporate finance literature by looking at two main financing issues, namely firms’ payout policies and capital structure decisions, in the context of emerging markets. The thesis consists of seven chapters, including five main standalone...

We examine whether UK firms engage in earnings management or forecast guidance to ensure that their reported earnings meet analyst earnings expectations. We explore two earnings management mechanisms: (a) positive abnormal working capital accruals; and (b) classification shifting of core...

We examine the economic consequences of the mandatory adoption of IFRS in EU countries by showing which types of economies have the largest reduction in investment-cash flow sensitivity post-IFRS. We also examine whether the reduction in investment-cash flow sensitivity depends on firm size as...

This study explores the market response to achieving analyst earnings expectations, distinguishing between expectations achieved through earnings forecast guidance and earnings management. We consider three earnings management tools: real earnings management, working capital accruals management,...

This paper introduces a model seeking to explain the discretionary write-downs, write-offs, and other restructuring provisions reported by managers. The model comprises a firm, a manager, and a financial market. The firm is about to be restructured. The manager has some private information about...

Despite a documented decline in the number of dividend payers in the UK it is found that aggregate real dividends paid by industrials actually increased between 1979 and 2000. This was attributed to the firms lost from the sample being generally small distributors of dividends whilst the growth...

This paper investigates the abnormal share return dispersion occurring when companies announce their interim or final earnings. Whereas, prior research has focused on abnormal returns, little attention has been given to investigating the dispersion of the abnormal returns. We find strong...

DEA has been extensively used to measure the efficiency of financial institutions. Its advantages are clearly understood. But there are many unresolved problems. There are various views based on different modelling philosophies of what constitutes inputs and outputs in a financial institution....