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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether or not industry membership can explain the leverage of Shanghai listed firms prior to the 2007 financial crisis. In view of the central role that manufacturing industry played in China's rise as a global economic power, the authors are particularly interested in whether or not manufacturing is a special case.

The paper undertakes a comparative study of leverage differences between manufacturing and non-manufacturing industry firms on both a cross-section and time-series basis. This is supplemented by a pooled regression analysis that models the factors determining leverage on an industry-by-industry basis.

The authors find that leverage levels differ across industries because of industry-based differences in financial characteristics. It is also found that, despite playing a leading role in China's economic development, there is no evidence to suggest that manufacturing is a special case. Across all sectors borrowing-power-related variables were identified as being important determinants of leverage and, contrary to the expectations, factors relating to profitability were largely insignificant.

The trade off and pecking order capital structure theories found to be commonly applicable to firms in the western business environment do not appear to adequately explain capital structure in China.

The paper identify evidence to suggest that China needs to be treated as a “special case” in the context of capital structure theory due to the unique cultural and business environment.

We examine the dividend pay out patterns for all UK listed industrial companies featured in the FTSE All Share Index for the period 1992‐1998. Then we match the pay out patterns to different dividend policies. From our empirical observations, we argue that dividend signalling does not universally apply to all firms. We also report our evidence that there is no industry norm for dividend policy, particularly when firms have decided whether to use dividends to signal or not. In addition, we found that the percentage of insiders’ share holdings, market capitalisation and as set book values are statistically significant for determining whether firms use dividends to signal or not.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate Master of Business Administration (MBA) students' performance in handling alternative types of accounting questions in order to generate some insights for future MBA accounting module teaching and assessment design.

The paper employs two approaches: first, statistical analysis is used on a large sample of MBA students' accounting modules results on two different types of questions. Second, common problems are identified from the assessments and summarized for analysis.

There is a statistically significant difference in performance between two types of assessment methods. The difference can be logically explained from analyzing the common problems identified in MBA students' accounting assessment scripts.

This paper provides only preliminary findings for the purpose of “rethinking” of future MBA accounting module design. Further work is required to investigate the impacts of MBA students' personal characteristics, e.g. year of working experience, first degree discipline, etc. on their accounting module performance.

This paper provides some important practical insights that suggest that the current MBA accounting module design “may be” incorrect in terms of topic coverage, delivery schedule and expectation.

The paper will initiate a new debate on how future MBA accounting modules should be, and how to teach and assess it.

This paper attempts to investigate what kind of firms is more likely to use capital structure to signal; and in particular to investigate the impacts of corporate ownership structures on firms' capital structure signalling decisions.

The paper develops theoretical models and then uses OLS multiple regression, piecewise regression and logistic regression analysis on a set of data derived from 327 UK firms listed in the FTSE ALL share index to test the hypotheses.

The empirical results show that capital structure is not homogeneously used as a signalling tool; and firms with insider ownerships less or equal to 1.14 per cent are more likely the signallers.

Although other variables have been examined, this paper focuses on the impacts of insider ownership on capital structure signalling. Further work is required to investigate other variables that are mentioned but they are outside the scope of this paper.

This paper provides useful practical insights to both managers and investors to help them better understand and interpret firms' capital structure signals.

Before this paper, most people commonly agreed that capital structure contains signalling values. However, the findings suggest that it is not always the case.