Lease Financing and Corporate Governance

Lease financing is a well‐recognized mechanism for reducing the agency costs of debt. This study examines whether firms that attempt to control the agency costs of equity through strong governance structures, including Chief Executive Officer compensation alignment and board structure, are more likely to use an agency cost reducing debt structure, such as leasing. For a sample of large firms, we find that firms who use more incentive compensation and have more outside directors also tend to use more lease financing, suggesting these agency cost reducing measures are complements.     

The multinomial option pricing model and its Brownian and Poisson limits

The Cox, Ross, and Rubinstein binomial model is generalizedto the multinomial case. Limits are investigated and shown toyield the Black-Scholes formula in the case of continuous samplepaths for a wide variety of complete market structures. In thediscontinuous case of Merton-type formula is shown to result,provided jump probabilities are replaced by their correspondingArrow-Debreu prices.     

Das stärkt den Rücken

YOGA bei Gesundheitsproblemen — Rückenmassagen sind wunderbar, aber zeitaufw?ndig und nicht ganz billig. Eine übung, die den ganzen Rücken massiert und leicht zu machen ist, zeigen wir hier. Dazu sind nur eine gepolsterte Unterlage und ein wenig Schwung n?tig. Je h?ufiger die übung gemacht wird, umso mehr l?sst sich der Schwung durch bewusste K?rperbewegung ersetzen. Ziel ist es, die Schaukelübung in Zeitlupe durchführen zu k?nnen. Erforderlich sind aber ein gedehnter Rücken und starke Bauchmuskeln. Email: kollak@asfh-berlin.de(Betreff: Yoga bei ...)     

Rough and lonely road to prosperity: a reexamination of the sources of growth in Africa using Bayesian model averaging

This paper takes a fresh look at Africa's growth experience by using the Bayesian model averaging (BMA) methodology. BMA enables us to consider a large number of potential explanatory variables and sort out which of these variable can effectively explain Africa's growth experience. Posterior coefficient estimates reveal that key engines of growth in Africa are substantially different from those in the rest of the world. More precisely, it is shown that mining, primary exports and initial primary education exerted differential effect on African growth. These results are examined in relation to the existing literature. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.