This paper studies gender discrimination against entrepreneurs by financial institutions. Based on the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) that covers firms in several countries of Western Europe as well as in the transition countries of Eastern Europe, our analysis suggests that femalemanaged firms are less likely to obtain a bank loan compared with male-managed counterparts. In addition, there is some evidence that female entrepreneurs are charged higher interest rates when loan applications are approved. Disaggregation of the sample by country groups suggests that these results are driven by firms in the least financially developed countries of the region.

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This article investigates the influence of family involvement on firm performance in an emerging market economy. Using a panel of 217 Polish companies from 1997 to 2005, the authors find an inverted U-shaped relationship between the share of family ownership and firm performance. The data also reveal that firms with family CEOs are likely to outperform their counterparts that have nonfamily CEOs. The results take into account the endogeneity of family ownership and are robust to a number of specification checks.

The paper investigates the link between the optimal level of non-financial firms' shortterm leverage and macroeconomic and idiosyncratic sources of uncertainty. We develop a structural model of a firm's value maximization problem that predicts a negative relationship between uncertainty and optimal level of borrowing. This proposition is tested using a panel of non-financial US firms drawn from the COMPUSTAT quarterly database covering the period 1993-2003. The estimates confirm that as either form of uncertainty increases firms decrease their levels of short-term leverage. This effect is stronger for macroeconomic uncertainty than for idiosyncratic uncertainty.

We investigate the impact of measures of uncertainty on firms' capital investment behavior using a panel of U.S. firms. Increases in firmspecific and CAPM -based measures have a significant negative effect on investment spending, while market-based uncertainty has a positive impact.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. We find evidence that an increase in the TDI or its subindices leads to an increase in the dividend-to-cash-flow ratio. These results support the hypothesis that companies with weak shareholder rights pay dividends less generously than do firms with high corporate governance standards. Therefore, minority shareholders often use power to extract dividends. We also find that large and more profitable companies have a higher dividend payout ratio, while riskier and more indebted firms prefer to pay lower dividends. Terms of use: Documents in

We investigate the analytical and empirical linkages between cash flow, uncertainty and firms' capital investment behavior. Our empirical approach constructs measures of own-and market-specific uncertainty from firms' daily stock returns and S&P 500 index returns along with a CAPM-based risk measure. Our results indicate that even in the presence of important firm-specific variables, uncertainty is an important determinant of firms' investment behavior. Depending on the measure of uncertainty used, investment may be stimulated or curtailed by the effects of uncertainty on its own or through its interactions on cash flow.Keywords: capital investment, cash flow, uncertainty, CAPM JEL: E22, D81, C23 * We are grateful for comments received from seminar participants at Koç University, the University of Strathclyde and the 13th International Conference on Panel Data, University of Cambridge, Fabio Schiantarelli and the constructive suggestions of an anonymous reviewer.

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