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We draw on a unique dataset for energy use by manufacturing firms in 18 Sub-Saharan African countries to estimate the relationship between energy intensity of production and firms' characteristics. Our results show that lower levels of energy intensity are associated with export activity, foreign ownership, size and capital-labor ratio, while higher levels of energy intensity are associated with a higher share of fuels in total energy consumption. We do not find a statistically significant relationship between energy intensity and the age of capital equipment or ownership of a generator, while our results on quality management certification are inconclusive.

Utilizing the random effects model and Faccio (2010)’s methodology for classifying political connections, I find that politically connected Southeast Asian firms tend to have higher taxes and accounting performance than non-politically connected firms. The type of connection matters, with state-ownership producing the strongest benefits for market share. Contingent country-level variables, such as the economy, corruption, and the legal environment, also influence the value of corporate political ties. I find that Faccio (2010)’s results are likely more economically important than mine, even when controlling for the panel data effect.

Accompanied by the enormous losses cause by the worldwide economic recession and Internet bubbles, venture capital industry at the same time is faced with another crucial problems: for a venture capital firm, what characteristics should a venture capitalist possess? How does these characteristics influence the behaviors of the venture capital firms and venture capitalists themselves? As everyone knows, venture capital firms differ significantly in business strategies and fund sources, thereby give rise to the difference of venture capital firms in selecting the characteristics of venture capitalists. Therefore, universal traits and characteristics of venture capitalists are difficult to find out. In the circumstances, venture capital firms must understand how venture capitalists characteristics may influence investment behaviors and strategies. By means of the analysis of the characteristics of venture capitalists and venture capital firms, this study tries to find out the important factors affecting the behaviors of venture capitalists. Through the empirical research towards the Taiwan venture capitalists, several findings are presented in this study. As finding shows, some characteristics of venture capital firms such as firm age have a great influence on the behaviors of venture capitalists. Moreover, from the insignificance of some factors examined in this study, we conclude that there are still some structural factors influencing the behaviors of venture capitalists.

In a firm level matched sample of 499 firms we examine the information flow between stocks and the credit default swap (CDSs) over a period of January 2004 to December 2008. Our study confirms the general findings of previous studies that the information generally flows from equity market to CDS market. However, for a much smaller number of firms we also find that information also flows from the CDS to its stock. A major advantage of our sample period is that it allows us to examine the information flow before and during the crisis. This paper makes two contributions. We document that the firms for which the information flows from the CDS to its stock increases by almost tenfold during the crisis. The current crisis is often referred as a credit crisis, so this finding is consistent with what is expected of CDSs. The major contribution of this paper is that it identifies the firm specific factors that influence the information flow across the two markets. We show that characteristics such as asset size, profitability, and industry, amongst others, play an important role in determining information flow.

In a firm level matched sample of 499 firms we examine the information flow between stocks and the credit default swap (CDSs) over a period of January 2004 to December 2008. Our study confirms the general findings of previous studies that the information generally flows from equity market to CDS market. However, for a much smaller number of firms we also find that information also flows from the CDS to its stock. A major advantage of our sample period is that it allows us to examine the information flow before and during the crisis. This paper makes two contributions. We document that the firms for which the information flows from the CDS to its stock increases by almost tenfold during the crisis. The current crisis is often referred as a credit crisis, so this finding is consistent with what is expected of CDSs. The major contribution of this paper is that it identifies the firm specific factors that influence the information flow across the two markets. We show that characteristics such as asset size, profitability, and industry, amongst others, play an important role in determining information flow.

This study examines if three hypothesized variables affect the extent of corporate strategic information, i.e. voluntary information, in corporate annual reports, specifically in Sweden in the year of 2012. The variables deemed appropriate to the Swedish environment, i.e. firm size, ownership dispersion and performance, were retrieved from previous disclosure research conducted in a Swedish context (Cook, 1989; Adrem, 1999), as well as relevant theoretical consideration. The statistical analysis conducted in this thesis suggests that firm size is significantly positively related to the extent of strategic corporate information in Swedish listed firms’ corporate annual reports. The result hence confirms the expectation that larger listed firms to a larger extent disclose strategic corporate information, i.e. voluntary information, in their corporate annual reports. No positive relation was found between the variables performance or ownership dispersion and the extent of strategic corporate information. The results of this thesis are interpreted to suggest that asymmetric information and agency costs are important determinants of the extent of strategic corporate information, i.e. voluntary information, in Swedish corporate annual reports. Larger firms seem to reduce agency costs and narrow the information asymmetry by increasing the level of information disclosed.

This paper looks at whether firms’ credit ratings are negatively affected by litigation risk after controlling for known factors that affect credit ratings. The conventional wisdom is that litigation risk and credit ratings have an inverse relationship. However, my hypothesis is that the inverse relationship will not be stable if the model of credit ratings has taken other factors into account. The methodology first constructs a model of litigation risk, and then regress the credit ratings on the measurement of litigation risk. Previous empirical research on litigation risk measurement uses industry proxies as indicators for litigation risk. In this paper, I include firm characteristics and the Beneish M-score (a determinant for earnings manipulation) in addition to the industry proxy to construct an alternative model measuring litigation risk. I find that supplementing the Francis, Philbrick and Schipper (1994a, b; hereafter FPS) industry proxy with measures of firm characteristics improves predictive ability. In the model of credit ratings, I find that the change of litigation risk has a negative correlation with the credit ratings. However, the negative coefficient on the change of litigation risk changes to a positive one after controlling for other variables such as firm size, return on asset, and interest coverage ratio. This finding provides support for the hypothesis that the negative correlation between the credit ratings and litigation risk is not stable. This suggests that credit ratings may not incorporate litigation risk specifically although litigation can lead to firms’ financial damage and reputation crisis. However, the negative coefficient on the change of litigation risk remains unchanged when I control for the year fixed effects. I also find a negative correlation between the year 2007 and credit ratings due to financial crisis. The results are not conclusive given the likely simultaneous determination of litigation risk and credit ratings.

This thesis examines the patterns and determinants of corporate financial policy (capital structure and dividend policy) in Zimbabwe. In particular it investigates various aspects of corporate financial behaviour in an emerging market; the evolution of corporate financial structure and dividend payout ratio over the past 25 years (1975-1999), the impact of the reform programme (introduced in 1992) on firm characteristics, the corporate financing patterns during the period 1990-1999, the determinants of corporate capital structures and dividend policy and the interaction between corporate financing and dividend policy decisions. The main results that emerge from the analysis suggest that (i) the debt ratio for the Zimbabwean corporate sector significantly increased after the reform (ii) the Zimbabwean corporate sector mainly depends on external finance (75 % of total financing) especially short-term finance, which contributes 52 % of total financing. Furthermore, the results support the following hypotheses (i) the pecking order hypothesis that firms prefer internal financing to external financing, (ii) the trade-off hypothesis that non-debt tax shields reduce the expected gains from leverage, (iii) firms use liquid assets to finance investments, (iv) the agency cost hypothesis that increasing managerial ownership helps to align the interests of managers and shareholders and therefore reduces the role of debt as an agency-conflict mitigating factor, (v) large firms have lower bankruptcy costs and therefore can support more debt than smaller firms, (vi) debt service limits the amount of cash paid out as dividends, and (vii) high growth firms rely on external finance more than low growth firms (viii) high growth and firms have low payout ratios (iv) Cash flows and institutional investors increase the likelihood that firms will pay dividends (v) capital structure and dividend policy decisions are interdependent and highly leveraged firms have low payout ratios.

Investing has become increasingly popular among individuals in recent years,this has led to multiple investing strategies formalizing. One of them being factorinvesting, a strategy where investors search for companies with certain strongfirm specific financial metrics through screening. Many researchers try to findwhich these metrics are, and which of them has an effect on the cross-sections ofstock returns. This study examines the relationship between the three metrics,earnings-to-price, dividend yield, debt over equity and the European stock marketbetween January 2010 to December 2022. This is done by using the two-stageregression model suggested by Fama and Macbeth (1973). Our results show thatthere is an anomaly in the European stock market and that there is a firmcharacteristic risk associated with these metrics. This suggests that when lookingat individual firms, investors are willing to pay a premium for the metrics studiedin this paper and it is therefore important to take them into account whenscreening for individual companies. As the previous research is mainly focusedon the American stock market and emerging markets in Europe, our thesis fills agap by providing a view on factor premiums in the European market as a whole.