Corporate dividencs and seasoned equity issues: an empirical investigation

This paper investigates whether managers rely on dividends to obtain a higher price in a stock offering and whether the stock price reaction to dividend and offering announcements justifies such a coordination. The evidence does not support either conjecture. Issuing firms are not more likely to pay or increase dividends than nonissuing forms. Moreover, there is little evidence that firms time stock offering announcements right after dividend declarations to befefit from the attendant information disclosure. The analysis of dividend and stock offering announcement effects suggests few if any benefits from linking divbidend and stock offering announcements.

Executive compensation and executive incentive problems: an empirical analysis

The question of whether the design of the corporate executive pay package reflects an attempt to reduce agency costs between shareholders an managers is adressed. The components of senior executive pay are found to vary systematically across firms in a manner that cannot easily be explained by tax effects, and which would indicate that individual elements of pay are aimed at controlling for limited horizon and risk exposure problems. Managerial decisions and the structure of managerial pay therefore appear to be interrelated.

Labor participation in corporate policy-making decisions: West Germany's experience with codetermination

If workers are wealth maximizers, codetermination should lead to less risky investments, smaller dividends, reduced firm leverage, higher and more stable salaries, and more capital-intensive production processes. Unless codetermination also increases productivity by raising wokers' morale and satisfaction or reduces information asymmetries within the firm, shareholder wealth and firm value will decline. An analysis of West Germany's case, however, indicates that codetermination has little, if any, effect on corporate operations and performance.

The Board Committee as a Legal Transplant: a Comparative Analysis illustrated by the example of the Audit Committee

Bilanzskandale und Missmanagement haben in den vergangenen Jahren den Ruf nach besseren Kontrollmechanismen in der Unternehmensführung laut werden lassen. Audit Committees sind ein wichtiges Werkzeug um eine solche Kontrolle sicherzustellen und sind inzwischen weltweit zum integralen Bestandteil einer guten "Corporate Governance" geworden. Die Audit Committees haben sich in unterschiedlichen kulturellen und rechtlichen Umgebungen etabliert. Wie der Beitrag zeigt, hat die weltweite Zunahme der Bedeutung der "Corporate Governance" das Audit Committee zum Vorzeigebeispiel eines "legal transplant" gemacht.