We analyse uniformity in the market's valuation of director human capital by comparing director compensation across firms with and without director overlaps. We find that although there is less variation in director compensation for connected boards, which share a common director, than for...

The changing nature of initial public offering (IPO) underpricing is examined using a sample of 513 IPOs launched in the UK from 1993 to 2001. It is found that the mean UK underpricing is initially less than that in the USA, reverses itself in the mid-1990s, returns to a lower level during the...

We posit that firms use dividend payout policy to reduce information asymmetry and agency costs caused by country-level institutional weaknesses. Firms operating in countries with weak insider trading laws attempt to mitigate this institutional weakness by committing themselves to paying out...

This study investigates patterns in dividend payment across nine common law and sixteen civil law countries over 1994-2007. We begin by examining whether the recent decline in the number of dividend payers is solely a US phenomenon or part of a more global trend. We find that at the beginning of...

We show that country-level creditor rights influence dividend policies around the world by establishing the balance of power between debt and equity claimants. Creditors demand and managers consent to a more restrictive payout policy as a substitute for weak creditor rights in an effort to...

<heading id="h1" level="1" implicit="yes" format="display">ABSTRACT</heading>Using more than 350,000 sell-side analyst recommendations from January 1994 to August 2006, this paper examines the predictive content of aggregate analyst recommendations. We find that changes in aggregate analyst recommendations forecast future market excess returns after controlling...

This paper contributes to the literature on centrality measures in economics by defining a team game and identifying the key players in the game. As an illustration of the theory we create a unique data set from the UEFA Euro 2008 tournament. To capture the interaction between players we create...

This paper contributes to the literature on centrality measures in economics by defining a team game and identifying the key players in the game. As an illustration of the theory we create a unique data set from the UEFA Euro 2008 tournament. To capture the interaction between players we create...