This paper compares the pricing of traditional, on-balance- sheet loans (TL) with a corresponding sample of project finance loans (PFL), where project finance is defined as quot;limited or non-recourse financing of a newly to be developed project through the establishment of a vehicle...

We measure flexibility of dividend policy and study its impact on abnormal shareholders' returns in the European Union. When we use relative repurchase frequency and relative repurchase amounts as a measure of flexibility, civil law companies are more flexible. A more frequent use of repurchases...

This paper examines the performance of newly public firms and compares those firms that initiated dividends with those that did not. Earnings increases following the dividend initiation and earnings surprises for initiating firms are more favorable than those for noninitiating firms....

Using a database of over 4100 listed industrial companies, we examine the evolution of cash dividends and share repurchases from 1989 to 2005 in the fifteen nations that were members of the European Union before May 2004. As in the United States, the fraction of European firms paying dividends...

This study summarizes the economic and political developments relating to privatization, state capitalism, and state ownership of business since 2000 and then surveys the extensive recent research examining these issues empirically. Through the early 21st century, there was an unambiguous global...

We investigate the relation between state ownership and corporate investment. In a matched panel of 624 European firms, state ownership curtails firms' responsiveness to investment opportunities. With increasing government ownership, investment becomes more sensitive to internal funds when...

This paper investigates the long-run stock returns of privatization initial public offering (IPO) firms using a sample of 241 privatization IPOs from 42 countries during the period 1981-2003. We compare one-, three-, and five-year holding period returns of privatization IPOs to those of the...

This paper argues that the documented post-share issue privatization (SIP) decline in profitability of divested Chinese companies is not evidence per se that China's SIP program is ineffective or unsuccessful. Instead, the positive privatization effect is often outweighed by a negative listing...

This paper investigates the effect of privatization on a world-wide basis. Our analysis presents empirical findings, both favourable and unfavourable, of studies examining privatization. The exposition emphasizes the political and economic significance of the privatization process and the set of...