Direct investment in commercial or residential real estate is found to provide valuable diversification benefits for Australian investors though this is not so evident for indirect real estate investment vehicles like listed Australian real estate investment trusts (A-REIT). Further,...

Conditions under which private firms going public will voluntarily disclose earnings forecasts in initial public offerings prospectuses are explored. The analysis implies younger, riskier companies do not voluntarily forecast earnings because of the potential costs of not performing as well as...

It is generally held that the choice of size and composition of the board of directors is endogenous to firm and recent theoretical models support this contention. This article focuses on the factors that might explain the size and composition of the board using a unique sample of the larger...

A large number of Australian investors have been granted the right to choose where their superannuation fund contributions will be invested, but it is difficult to ascertain whether investors will exercise this choice. Although expected-utility-maximizing investors might tend to change their...

The present paper develops and tests a model explaining public sector derivative use in terms of budget discrepancy minimization. The model is different from private sector models. Private sector models do not readily translate into the public sector, which typically faces different objectives....