In a sample of 26,395 firms from 40 countries, we find evidence in support of the dynamic trade-off theory for capital structure. Firms in every country of our sample partially adjust toward target capital structures. We show that legal, institutional, and other country-level factors explain...

CEOs and top management team members have incentives to influence their own pay. Asymmetric benchmarking of pay for CEOs has been linked to the CEO's control over the pay-setting process in previous research. This paper examines whether asymmetric benchmarking of pay exists for top management...

In a sample of 26,395 firms from 40 countries, we find evidence in support of the dynamic trade-off theory for capital structure. Firms in every country of our sample partially adjust toward target capital structures. We show that legal, institutional, and other country-level factors explain...

This paper investigates the predictability of the volatilities of large versus small firms. Using AR-GARCH models we show that there is symmetry in the ability of firms of different market values to predict conditional variances. Specifically, we show that volatility surprises of small (large)...

This paper investigates the impact of the development of capital markets on economic growth in Africa and reports a significant increase in real GDP per capita after stock exchanges are established. This paper also reveals that there are significant improvements in the level of private...