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We introduce agency and team production theories to explain the international joint venture (IJV) phenomenon. We regard IJV partners as participants in a team production and identified agency conflicts among partners as well as between parents and IJV affi liates. We empirically test the stability of IJVs with such determinants as the existence of monitoring principal, the history of repeated exchanges between partners, the efficiency of mutual monitoring by partners, the effi ciency of affiliate monitoring by parent firms, and the degree of international experience of the partners. The test results show that the existence of monitoring principal and the degree of international experience prove to be significant factors for IJV stability.

The authors examine how a firm’s risk change around an international acquisition is related to the managerial equity interest in the firm. Focusing on the international acquisitions made by bidding fi rms that have weak monitoring from outside shareholders, those that make an acquisition in an unrelated industry, and those that experience negative stock returns around announcements, the authors find that managers of these firms tend to undertake risk‐decreasing international acquisitions with the increase of managerial equity ownership and previously granted stock options. The evidence suggests that managerial incentives to use foreign acquisitions to reduce the risk of their personal wealth are more often utilized in the absence of shareholder monitoring.

We theoretically identify two levels of agency conflicts related to foreign direct investment (FDI): within a parent firm and between parent(s) and an affiliated firm. For a sample of 182 firms that announced U.S.‐related FDIs in 1995, we examine the effects of agency conflicts on the choice between a wholly owned subsidiary (WOS) and a joint venture (JV), and the relative share ownership of a parent. Firms with higher management ownership, especially the firms that made related FDIs, and firms with higher foreign affiliate monitoring efficiency are more likely to choose a WOS. Differences between U.S. and non‐U.S. parents are also examined.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how family firm ownership and management control affect corporate capital structure strategy after controlling for other significant variables. The authors argue that, although family ownership has a positive effect on a firm’s leverage, family control through the CEO position and equity performance moderate its impact.

Using a stratified random sample of 200 US public firms in the S & P Small-Cap 600 index from 1999 to 2007, this study uses random effect panel regressions to test the impact of family ownership on market value and book value debt ratios and the moderating effects of family control and equity performance after controlling for firm, industry, and macroeconomic variables.

The initial panel regression suggests that family ownership is not related to debt ratios. However, further examination with controls for family CEO and equity performance shows that family ownership is positively related to market and book value debt ratios, but its effect is offset by family control through the CEO position and equity performance.

This study’s methodology can be extended to examine how family firm governance factors affect other firm behaviors such as investment, risk management, and CEO compensation.

Practitioners should consider family ownership and management control factors when establishing financing strategy. The Small Business Administration and other government agencies should make similar considerations when setting policies.

This paper separates ownership and management control factors to explain why family firms use more or less leverage. This study, thus, reconciles the mixed results of prior studies, which do not differentiate between these two governance factors.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of management earnings forecasts on the level of information asymmetry around subsequent earnings announcement.

Employing the adverse selection cost method suggested by George et al., the paper compares for each sample firm the adverse selection cost around earnings announcement in forecasting years with that in non‐forecasting years.

Consistent with Diamond and Verrecchia is the finding that the earnings announcement in non‐forecasting years decreases information asymmetry during a three‐day announcement period and increases in a post‐announcement period up to seven days. No significant change in information asymmetry between pre‐ and post‐announcement periods when firms released a “good” news forecast is found. The firms that previously released a “bad” news forecast experience a significantly lower information asymmetry than those that did not forecast during announcement or post‐announcement days, and experience a decrease in information asymmetry in a five to seven‐day post‐announcement period.

This paper provides the first empirical reports on the different information asymmetry changes around earnings announcements followed by a “good” news management forecast from those followed by a “bad” news forecast.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the effect of initial international joint ventures (IJV) structural conditions on two main equity-based instability facets: change of IJV ownership structure and acquisition of the IJV by one of the IJV partners. Drawing on the transaction cost theory, the authors examine three key initial structural conditions: IJV formation mode, number of partners and IJV’s ownership structure.

The authors apply the “Event history analysis” technique to test the hypotheses using a data set of 140 French-foreign JVs.

The findings show that the mode of an acquisitive IJV and unequal equity positions held by partners increase the likelihood of a change of IJV’s ownership structure and its eventual acquisition by one of the partners. In addition, the findings show that while an increase in the number of IJV partners is directly related to the change of IJV ownership structure, it has a statistically insignificant effect on IJV acquisition.

Drawing on “transaction costs” arguments, this study advances the literature by offering fine-grained results related to the effects of initial structural conditions on aspects of unintended instability in French-foreign JVs.

Incentive‐based executive compensation is regarded as a mechanism for alleviating agency problems between executives and shareholders. Seventy‐three New Zealand (NZ) listed companies are used to examine the relationship between executive incentive compensation schemes (ICS) and firm performance. The results suggest that neither compensation level nor adoption of an ICS are significantly related to returns to shareholders or ROA. However, there is a statistically significant relationship between Tobin's q and both CEO compensation and executive share ownership. Further, the evidence suggests the recent compensation disclosure requirements in NZ are not yet stringent enough to allow adequate analysis of the link between ICSs and corporate performance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between information asymmetry and the quality of the external audit in the Tunisian capital market.

The paper uses panel data methodology.

The results show that the bid‐ask, a market‐based measure of information asymmetry, is negatively related to the employment of an industry specialist and big auditors; and positively related to audit firm tenure. However, further tests refine those conclusions, in that the positive association between tenure and bids‐ask spread differs between specialist and non‐specialist auditors and between Big 4 and non‐Big 4 auditors. Specifically, the paper finds that bid‐ask spreads is increasing in tenure for clients of non‐specialist and clients of non‐Big 4.

The difficulties in specifying correct models for determining the audit quality, the research analyze the auditor's quality such as big auditor, tenure, and specialist. The paper leaves this and other issues for future research.

Analyzing the effect of auditor's quality on information asymmetry and bid‐ask spreads is an emerging economy such as Tunisia is very appealing because earnings quality is the most important quality investors look for. And this research makes a link between two important areas of auditing and finance.

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effect of air mattress pressure on sleep quality.

Ten young healthy males participated in all hard surface [AH], shoulder soft [SS] and shoulder and hip soft mattress [SHS] conditions. The surface pressure for SS and SHS were set at their preferred levels.

The results showed that sleep efficiencies were over 95% for all the three conditions; there were no significant differences in individual sleep variables among the three conditions, but overall sleep quality was better for SS than AH (p = 0.065); heart rates during sleep was greater for AH than the other two conditions (p < 0.1); and a stronger relationship between clothing and bed microclimate humidity were found for SS and SHS than that for AH.

These results indicated that the both pressure relief air mattresses that were set at their own preferred levels provided high quality sleep with no marked differences.

Air pressure relief mattresses can improve sleep quality of healthy individuals during sleep at night. The results can be used to understand appropriate pressure distribution on surface mattress according to body region, and also to develop algorithms to provide optimum sleep using mattresses with surface pressure control by body region.

The present study found that the shoulder and/or hip pressure relief air mattresses that were set at their own preferred levels provided high quality sleep with no marked differences.