For decades, scholars and policy-makers have been interested in how fiscal policy influences entrepreneurship. Until now, research has focused on fiscal policy at the federal or regional level and used macro-economic outcome measures. Considerably less attention was given to how municipal...

This study explores a large and detailed dataset of financial statements of Belgian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) over the 1997–2010 period. Using accruals quality as a proxy for the quality of SMEs’ financial reports, we find that the quality of SMEs’ financial statements is...

<title>Abstract</title>The 2007 global financial crisis led to a chaotic financial environment characterized by highly uncertain and volatile stock markets. This created additional uncertainty about the fundamental value of shares and potentially increased the benefit of inside information. In this paper, we...

This paper empirically assesses whether knowledge networking affects the growth of small service firms. More specifically, using a large, unbalanced panel data set for the period 1992-2009, it investigates whether participation in a knowledge network called PLATO is positively related to service...

Most countries of the world have developed a wide array of government assistance programs for companies. However, it is only recently that researchers have started to evaluate the benefits of these programs empirically. This paper contributes to this emerging area of research by examining...

Exploring a unique database on insider trading in Belgium, we investigate whether high-quality corporate communication contributes to reducing insider trading profitability and information asymmetry. Using disclosure scores of professional financial analysts as a proxy for communication quality,...

We develop a model along the lines of Niskanen, articulating that under a soft government budget constraint the full production cost of the public good is not reflected in the tax price as perceived by the consumer-taxpayer-voter. Various proportions of non-tax financing and different degrees of...

This paper contributes to the empirical audit-quality literature and provides evidence on (the lack of) audit-quality differentiation in the private client segment of the Belgian audit market. Auditor size is used as audit-quality proxy. Prior evidence on audit-quality differentiation between...