I examine the role of debt-financed special payments to shareholders in defending incumbent managements during proxy contests. This role is based on shareholder preference for dividends and the consequent linkage between dividends and managerial security. The model is used to explain why the seemingly contradictory phenomena of (i) wealth losses to shareholders and (ii) lack of any substantial ...

This paper examines the possibility that financial contagion may be spread from one bank to another via the Australian payments system. The initial study of payments system risk was undertaken by Humphrey (1986) who found significant risk in the U.S. Fedwire system in the mid 1980s. Subsequent studies by Angelini, Maresca & Russo (1996), Kuussaari (1996), Northcott (2002) and Furfine (2003) hav...

Devaluation has different effects on the structure of trade patterns in countries which have a fixed exchange rate regime. The experience of devaluation in many countries has clearly shown that devaluation policies have not always led to the improvement of their trade pattern structures. Some empirical studies have revealed that after employing devaluation, the real rate of money in some nation...

The Mexican banking crisis of 1994]1995 has widely been interpreted as the victim of the balance-of-payments crisis, rather than its cause. After all, Mexican banks had been enjoying high capitalization ratios, deemed to be more than sufficient to deal with the increased risk of non-performing loans. This paper, however, suggests that to a large extent Mexican accounting practices } rather than...