This paper presents an empirical examination of firm characteristic determinants of the capital structure of a sample of 299 Irish small and medium sized firms (SMEs). Hypotheses formulated from pecking order and agency theories incorporating a financial growth life cycle approach are tested on...

The key contribution of this paper is an empirical examination of the financial growth life cycle model by combining a number of statistical tests. This approach is significantly different to that traditionally adopted in empirical investigations of SME financing, which is to examine the...

We review the literature on gold as an investment. We summarize a wide variety of literature. We begin with a review of how the gold markets operate, including the under researched leasing market; we proceed to examine research on physical gold demand and supply, gold mine economics and move...