We show that corporate use of long-term debt has decreased in the US over the past three decades and that this trend is heterogeneous across firms. The median percentage of debt maturing in more than 3 years decreased from 53% in 1976 to 6% in 2008 for the smallest firms but did not decrease for...

We show that pay is higher for chief executive officers (CEOs) with general managerial skills gathered during lifetime work experience. We use CEOs' résumés of Standard and Poor's 1,500 firms from 1993 through 2007 to construct an index of general skills that are transferable across firms and...

This paper shows how chief executive officer (CEO) characteristics affect the performance of acquirers in diversifying takeovers. When the acquirer's CEO has previous experience in the target industry, the acquirer's abnormal announcement returns are between 1.2 and 2.0 percentage points larger...

type="main" <title type="main">ABSTRACT</title> <p>q-based measures of the diversification discount are biased upward by mergers and acquisitions and its accounting implications. Under purchase accounting, acquired assets are reported at their transaction value, which typically exceeds the target's pre-merger book value....</p>

We study CEOs with a career background in finance. Firms with financial expert CEOs hold less cash, more debt, and engage in more share repurchases. Financial expert CEOs are more financially sophisticated: they are less likely to use one companywide discount rate instead of a project-specific...

In this paper we evaluate the impact of the European Monetary Union based on the Fama and French three-factor model. Our research shows that the models based on EMU factors present worse explanatory power than models based on local and international factors, although international factors do not...

In this research-paper we evaluate how corporate control around the world is defined and which variables, related to a firm's characteristics and the countries' infrastructures, influence this. We find that there is a small number of countries where firms are widely held. The role of financial...

There has been a long dispute about the relative importance of country versus industry diversification. We test the hypothesis that institutional ownership affects the relative importance of country and industry effects in explaining stock returns worldwide. We find that industry effects become...

The current status and legal framework of biogas production in Portugal are analyzed and compared to that of five other European countries, characterized by wide-ranging diversity of substrates and biogas applications. With this comparison, and with the calculation of the biogas energy potential...

We examine whether institutional investors affect corporate governance by analyzing institutional holdings in companies from 23 countries in 2003-2008. We find that firm-level governance is positively associated with international institutional investment. Changes in institutional ownership over...