Taxpayers are more compliant than the traditional economic models predict. Why? The literature calls it the “puzzle of tax compliance”. In this paper we use field, experimental and survey data to investigate the empirical evidence on whether presence of tax morale helps to resolve this puzzle. The results reveal a strong correlation between tax morale and tax evasion/compliance which confirms t...

Using more than 112,000 firm-year observations in 33 countries, we find that two Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation, remain significant in the determination of dividend policy even after controlling for governance and firm-specific factors. When uncertainty avoidance is high, only firms in countries with stronger investor protection pay more dividend...

Article history: This paper tests for beta-convergence and sigma-convergence in the corporate governancemodels, using a samAccepted 12 July 2012 ple of corporate governance ratings for 198 European corporations listed on the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index. A piecewise linear regression is deployed to select amodel and the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator JEL classification: is also applied...

This paper considers the Greenspan/Summers/IMF (GSI) argument that the Asian way of doing business was the deep cause of the Asian crisis. The IMF reform programme for the crisis-affected Asian countries suggested they should abandon the Asian business model and adopt the US corporate model. The main findings are: a) contrary to GSI doctrine, poor corporate governance and lack of competition ar...

The World Bank Group Entrepreneurship Survey measures entrepreneurial activity around the world. The database includes cross-country, time-series data on the number of total and newly registered businesses for 84 countries. This paper finds significant relationships between entrepreneurial activity and indicators of economic and financial development and growth, the quality of the legal and reg...

Taxpayers are more compliant than the traditional economic models predict. Why? The literature calls it the “puzzle of tax compliance”. In this paper we use field, experimental and survey data to investigate the empirical evidence on whether presence of tax morale helps to resolve this puzzle. The results reveal a strong correlation between tax morale and tax evasion/compliance which confirms t...

Using a panel data set of 361 German corporations for the period 1991 to 1996 we test the hypothesis that firms with more efficient governance structures have higher profitabilities. To determine efficiency we compare firms with respect to ownership concentration, the identity of owners, capital structure, investment and firm growth by a multi-input/multi-output Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)....

We examine firms that reprice their executive stock options and find little evidence that repricing reflects managerial entrenchment or ineffective governance. Repricing grants are economically significant, but there is little else unusual about compensation in repricing firms. Repricers tend to be smaller, younger, rapidly growing firms that experience a deep, sudden shock to growth and profit...

Financial reporting and disclosure are potentially important means for management to communicate firm performance and governance to outside investors. We provide a framework for analyzing managers’ reporting and disclosure decisions in a capital markets setting, and identify key research questions. We then review current empirical research on disclosure regulation, information intermediaries, a...