There is an ongoing theoretical debate about whether firm-owners would optimally use stronger or weaker incentive schemes for their managers as productmarket competition increases. Schmidt (1997) shows that the outside options of the managers play a crucial role: if the market for managers is...

The paper provides an up-to-date description of the distribution of female top executives in US corporations. Our data comprise a total of 54'380 observations from 2'489 firms over the time period from 1992 to 2001. Our results suggest that women are working for smaller, faster growing and more...

Using the GMM estimator technique described by Arellano and Bover (1995), this paper analyzes the profitability of 372 commercial banks in Switzerland over the period from 1999 to 2009. To evaluate the impact of the recent financial crisis, we separately consider the pre-crisis period,...

This paper investigates empirically the effects of institutions and market characteristics on corporate capital structure dynamics. Based on the fact that firms may temporarily deviate from their optimal capital structure due to the existence of adjustment costs, a partial adjustment model is...

This paper analyses 689 open-market purchases of public equity by private equity investors (PEIs) between 1999 and 2008. On average, we find a positive market reaction to the public announcement of such purchases in both the short and long term. Based on the long-term event study approach of...

We use a dynamic adjustment model and panel methodology to investigatethe determinants of a time- varying optimal capital structure. Because firmsmay temporarily deviate from their optimal capital structure in the presenceof adjustment costs, we also endogenize the adjustment process. In partic...

We use a dynamic framework and panel methodology to investigate the determinants of a time-varying corporate capital structure. Our sample comprises 706 European firms from France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. over the period from 1983 to 2002. If capital structure adjustment is costly, firms may...

We use a dynamic framework and panel methodology to investigate thedeterminants of a firms’ time-varying capital structure. Our sample comprises706 European firms from France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. overthe period from 1983 to 2002. If capital structure adjustment is costly, firmsmay...