Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to review and summarize research into managerial incentives, merger activity, performance, and the use and structure of compensation to mitigate agency problems in the firm. Design/methodology/approach - The authors discuss studies of size elasticity and...

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the risk-incentive effect of CEO stock options in the banking industry. Design/methodology/approach - For a sample of industrial mergers, Williams and Rao find that the risk-incentive effect of CEO stock options is associated with higher...

Changes in taxation of corporate dividends offer excellent opportunities to study dividend clientele effects. We explore payout policies and ownership structures around a major tax reform that took place in Finland in 2004. Consistent with dividend clienteles affecting firms' dividend policy...

This work examines the leverage ratios of firms covered by the 1998 SSBF Survey. We find that small firms in general are significantly more levered than their larger counterparts in an industry-matched Compustat sample, but the difference is at least partially explained by differences in...

"A tremendous amount of research examines US mutual funds, but fund markets also thrive in other countries. However, research about these fast growing markets is lacking. This study addresses Finnish funds. Fast growth of the Finnish fund industry, strong bank dominance in the industry and...

If firms issue convertible securities to facilitate sequential investment, the securities should be engineered to give sufficient flexibility to accommodate timing of follow-on investment. We examine call provisions in convertible bonds and argue that firms with investment options expected to...