This paper examines the theoretical and empirical determinants of firms' capital structure choice. The emphasis here is placed on the role of capital market imperfections through the tradeoff, pecking order and market timing theories to explain firms' leverage. Our analysis is conducted on a sample of 244 French listed companies over the period 1997-2007.The empirical results point to the existence of complementarity between the tradeoff hypothesis and the financing deficit variable, while no meaningful effect was detected for market conditions on debt ratio. Market timing in its simple form or extended one, is not confirmed either. The relevance of lagged leverage ratio in all tests confirms the existence of a process of dynamic adjustment to a target level.
This paper examines the relation between the ownership-control discrepancy and dividend policy of Tunisian firms. Using data of 44 Tunisian firms, the current study provides evidence in support of the expropriation hypothesis. The empirical results show that the largest shareholder maintains a controlling power measured by Banzhaf index in excess of his cash flow rights which, leads to a low level of dividend payout ratios. In contrast, when the control power is shared between multiple large shareholders, Tunisian firms are likely to pay large dividends.
This research paper examines how corporate governance is related to the quality of financial disclosures for a sample of French listed firms during the period 2003-2009. We find that the level of financial reporting is positively influenced by corporate governance score. Managers and block-holders are more likely to disclose less information. These results are consistent with the belief that effective corporate governance is associated with higher financial disclosure quality while entrenched insiders do not improve this effect.
This paper examines the possible association between the voting power of large shareholders and dividend payout policy for a panel of Tunisian firms over the period 1998-2004. The results show a negative relationship between the control stake of the dominant shareholder and payout rates. In contrast, the presence of another large shareholder affects the payout ratio positively. Our results also indicate that different owner types in control influence dividend policy differently. In particular, the control stake of families is associated with a significant negative impact on the dividend distributed whereas the voting power of financial institutions has a positive effect. We conclude that different owner classes have different role in corporate governance.
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