We test one of the main predictions of the financial flexibility paradigm that expectations about future firm-specific shocks affect the firm's leverage. We extract the expectations of small and large future shocks from the market prices of equity options. We find that expectations for future...

The paper analyzes internal factors which influence the use of equity - and mezzanine-based financing instruments in German privately held family firms. Based on a sample of 195 surveys of family firms, we investigate the impact of family specific goals and corporate governance structures on the...

Objectives: We examine decision factors of family firm owners for hiring a non-family Chief Financial Officer (CFO). We explore the perceptions of family firm owners towards external managers by analyzing how their family-specific and company-specific goals relate to the employment of a...

This paper studies whether the monotonicity condition of the investment-cash flow sensitivity is satisfied empirically. We show that if this condition holds, then the point of sample separation does not affect the monotonic relationship between the sensitivities of any two complementary classes...

This paper analyzes the differences in labor demand and labor turnover between family and nonfamily firms. The majority of firms in modern economies and, therefore, also in Germany are family controlled. These firms seem to have better employment performance than non-family controlled companies....

We investigate the capital structure of a large sample of corporations in 52 countries, focusing on the effects of macroeconomic and institutional characteristics on firms' dynamic behavior. We find that these characteristics affect both the optimal level of leverage and the adjustment process...

The Chinese government implemented the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) system in order to advance the quality of local capital markets by participation of foreign institutional investors. This paper identifies the channels through which foreign institutional investors influence...

Business angels dominate early-stage investment in firms, but research on their investment effects is scarce and is limited by sample selection. Therefore, we propose an algorithm for identifying business angel investments from total population data. We apply the algorithm to study business...

Though most economists agree that monetary policy has significant effects on the real sector in the short run, interest-rate elasticities of macroeconomic aggregates in general are found to be low. Recently, the credit channel has been discussed as an additional channel through which monetary...

In 1867, the "Compromise" between Austria and Hungary laid the foundation of a single currency system with a common central bank. As in today's euroland, each part of the monarchy remained sovereign in fiscal matters. Moreover, the borrowing needs of both parts of the monarchy were quite large,...