Using a sample of highly (over-)leveraged Austrian ski hotels undergoing debt restructurings, we show that reducing a debt overhang leads to a significant improvement in operating performance (return on assets, net profit margin). In particular, a reduction in leverage leads to a decrease in overhead costs, wages, and input costs, and to an increase in sales. Changes in leverage in the debt restructurings are instrumented with Unexpected Snow, which captures the extent to which a ski hotel experienced unusually good or bad snow conditions prior to the debt restructuring. Effectively, Unexpected Snow provides lending banks with the counterfactual of what would have been the ski hotel's operating performance in the absence of strategic default, thus allowing to distinguish between ski hotels that are in distress due to negative demand shocks ("liquidity defaulters") and ski hotels that are in distress due to debt overhang ("strategic defaulters").

This paper examines the IPO pricing processes of two different markets, each of which employs bookbuilding methods for marketing the IPO shares. For each market we investigate two questions: Does bookbuilding serve mainly as a method for distributing shares, or also as a means for gathering information? And, to what extent do underwriters respond in IPO pricing to any information that they obtain through bookbuilding? We find that a direct comparison of these two markets sheds light on the bookbuilding process in each. For Nasdaq IPOs we find evidence consistent with informational rents being earned by investors for providing information during bookbuilding. On the Neuer Markt there is no such evidence. Instead, we find evidence consistent with rents being paid for information that helps underwriters to set indicative price ranges prior to bookbuilding. The two markets differ further in how underwriters respond to information in pricing IPOs. For the Neuer Markt, this response is severly constrained since underwriters do not set prices above the price ranges. We estimate the total cost of this "restriction" to be approximately one billion Euros for our sample of IPOs. While there are no such apparent restrictions for Nasdaq, we show that also on this market IPO prices are "sticky" in that underwriters respond less to information received later in the pricing process. / Series: Working Papers SFB "Adaptive Information Systems and Modelling in Economics and Management Science"

Part I, entitled "A test of goodness-of-fit for multivariate distributions with special emphasis on multinornality", investigates a modification of the Chi-squared goodness-of-fit statistic which eliminates certain objectionable properties of other multivariate goodness-of-fit tests. Special emphasis is given to the multinormal distribution, and computer simulation is used to generate an empirical distribution for this goodness-of-fit statistic for the standardized bivariate normal density. Attempts to fit a four-parameter generalized gamma density function to this empirical distribution were only partially successful. Part II, entitled "The centroid method of numerical integration", begins with a discussion of the often slighted midpoint method of numerical integration, then, using Taylor's theorem, generalized formulae for the centroid method of numerical integration of a function of several variables over a closed bounded region are developed. These formulae are in terms of the derivatives of the integrand and the moments of the region of integration with respect to its centroid. Since most nonpathological bounded regions can be well approximated by a finite set of simplexes, formulae are developed for the moments of general as well as special simplexes. Several numerical examples are given and a comparison is made between the midpoint and Gaussian quadrature methods. FORTRAN programs are included. Part III - entitled "Non-parametric density estimation," begins with an extensive literature review of non-parametric methods for estimating probability densities based on a sample of N observations and goes on to suggest a new method which is to subtract a penalty for roughness fron the log-likelihood before maximizing. The roughness penalty is a functional of the assumed density function and the recommendation is to use a linear combination of the squares of the first and second derivatives of the square root of the density function. Many numerical examples and graphs are given and show that the estimated density function, for selected values of the coefficients in the linear expression, turns out to be very smooth even for very small sample sizes. Computer programs are not included but are available upon request. Part IV, entitles "On separation of product and error variability," surveys standard techniques of partitioning the total variance into product (or item) variance and error (or testing) variance when destructive testing makes replication over the same item impossible. The problem of negative variance estimates is also investigated. The factor-analysis model and related iterative techniques are suggested as an alternative method for dealing with this separation when three or more independent measurements per item are available. The problem of dependent measurements is discussed. Numerical examples are included. / Ph. D.

[pt] Esta dissertação de mestrado tem por objetivo avaliar e determinar a influência da cavitação no fenômeno da erosão de materiais de engenharia à luz das recomendações da norma ASTM G32:2010. O trabalho foi motivado pelo interesse do Programa de Metrologia em participar, no âmbito da cooperação celebrada com o Instituto de Metrologia do Reino Unido, de um novo desafio no campo da metrologia científica relacionado à medição de cavitação. A metodologia utilizada baseou-se em trabalhos experimentais realizados com o medidor de cavitação recentemente desenvolvido pelo Laboratório de Acústica do NPL, que foi pioneiramente utilizado para mapear os níveis de cavitação nos experimentos de erosão de materiais de engenharia para diferentes amplitudes (delta) de pulsação do transdutor e diferentes posicionamentos (lambda) da haste do transdutor em relação ao espécime submetido à erosão. Dentre os resultados destaca-se a perda de massa mensurada para cada um dos três materiais de engenharia submetidos à erosão por cavitação: 101,4 mg no Alumínio; 66,0 mg na Liga Alumínio-Bronze e 6,80 mg no Aço inoxidável 304. Três são as conclusões mais relevantes do trabalho (i) no que concerne a perda de massa (medida da erosão), o parâmetro delta mostrou-se mais crítico que o parâmetro lambda; (ii) os materiais de menor dureza são os mais susceptíveis à erosão por cavitação e (iii) quanto maior a resistência à erosão menor é a uniformidade da cavitação. / [en] The aim of this dissertation is to evaluate and assess the influence of the cavitation on the erosion of engineering materials in line with recommendations of the ASTM G32:2010 standard. The work was motivated by the interest of the postgraduate Metrology Programme to participate, within the framework of the cooperation celebrated with the National Metrology Institute of the United Kingdom (National Physical Laboratory, NPL), in a new metrology challenge related to measurement of cavitation. The methodology used was based on experimental work carried out with the cavitation meter recently developed by the Laboratory of Acoustics of the NPL, which was first used to map the levels of cavitation inducing erosion in engineering materials for different amplitude of the transducer (delta) and displacement (lambda) of the transducer horn relative to the specimen subjected to erosion. Among the results is emphasized the mass loss measured for each of the three engineering materials submitted to cavitation erosion: 101.4 mg for the aluminium; 66.00 mg for the Alloy Aluminium-Bronze and 6.80 mg for the stainless steel 304. Three are the main findings of the work (i) with respect to loss of mass (a measure of erosion), the parameter delta was more critical that the parameter lambda; (ii) the lower the hardness of the engineering material eroded, the most susceptible it becomes to cavitation erosion and (iii) the higher the erosion resistance the lower the uniformity of cavitation.

Using data from twelve countries in the European Union over a 13-year period (2002-2015) with 9,707 observations, the effect of multinationality and the crisis on cash holdings is examined in a European setting. Both firm and country characteristics of firms are taken into account. This research contributes to the fields of risk management in the area of cash holdings and multinationality. Findings suggest that the cash ratio of companies is not significantly related to multinationality or the financial crisis. Moreover, findings show that, when taking determinants of cash holdings into account, Dutch firms have significantly higher cash holdings than eight out of eleven countries in the sample.

We contribute to the empirical literature on the debt bias of corporate income taxation through a firm-level evaluation of the European Commission's recent proposal of an Allowance for Growth and Investment (AGI). We use the introduction, the application and the repeal of a similar allowance in Austria during the early 2000s to evaluate the effects of the AGI on corporate equity and profit distribution. Our analysis provides evidence that such an allowance could increase corporate equity ratios by 5.5 percentage points and reduce profit distributions by 7.6 percentage points. These effects are stronger than those the previous literature for traditional Allowance for Corporate Equity (ACE) tax systems has identified. Additionally, we contribute to the recently expanding literature on the influence of ownership on tax planning as we find significant differences in the utilization of the AGI depending on individual specifics of the majority shareholder as well as depending on the number of shareholders of the respective firms. / Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Series

This study examines the extent to which principal-principal agency conflicts within venture capital (VC) syndicates lead to additional principal-agent conflicts in IPO firms in two institutional contexts. Using a matched sample of 274 VC-backed IPOs in the US and the UK, it shows that the diversity of a VC syndicate increases pre-IPO discretionary current accruals, used as a proxy for earnings management, but the impact of such diversity is higher in the US. There is also evidence of higher underpricing and lower aftermarket performance in firms with higher earnings management and VC diversity, and these negative performance effects are also higher in the US. Our findings indicate that local and informal institutions have a significant effect on multiple agency conflicts in IPO firms and performance outcomes.

In intra-group finance hybrid instruments allow for tailor-made form of finance. Hence hybrid finance is often used for international tax planning in multinational groups. Due to a lack of international tax harmonization or tax coordination qualification conflict can arise. A specific hybrid instrument is classified as debt in one country, and as equity in the other country. This may lead to double taxation. In the reverse case, double non-taxation can arise. Against this legal background one might expect that cross-border hybrid intra-group finance is advantageous in comparison to classical debt finance in case of double-non-taxation while it can be expected to be disadvantageous in the case of double taxation of the yield. Previous studies do not include qualification conflicts. Thus the question arises how qualification conflicts are affecting an intra-group finance decision. We examine effects of such qualification conflicts, resulting from the use of cross-border, intra-group hybrid finance, on the tax-advantageousness as compared to classical debt finance. The analysis is based on a binomial simulation model including economic and legal uncertainty. We show that the results of our analysis under uncertainty vary significantly when compared to the more obvious results under economic and legal certainty. (author´s abstract) / Series: Discussion Papers SFB International Tax Coordination

The aim of this paper is to analyze the pattern of speculation-led growth in Turkey. It is dependent on international capital flows, whose continuity becomes more and more critical given the current account deficit, which is estimated to reach 6.1% as a ratio to GDP at the end of 2005. The paper assesses the sustainability of this speculation-led growth in the context of EU enlargement and compares the current state of fragility with former crises in Turkey as well as in East Asia and Latin America. Following a severe financial crisis in 2001, Turkey has entered a new phase of fragile growth led by boom-euphoric expectations. The paper aims at explaining this new phase and the evolution of the risk perceptions of both the creditors as well as the debtors in this "speculation game" based on the post-Keynesian/Minskyan concepts of endogenous expectations and financial fragility. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

The aim of this paper is to analyze the fragility of the New Member States and accession countries in the Central Eastern and South Eastern European countries (henceforth Eastern Europe) to the turbulences in the global economy and the changes in the direction of the international capital flows. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series