Non-U.S. firms frequently pay a substantial premium to have a U.S. bank lead their initial public offering of equity, even when the issuing firm is not seeking a listing on a U.S. exchange. We provide evidence that this decision reflects an expectation that U.S. banks deliver a higher quality...

Why are there such pronounced differences in patterns of ownership and control of corporations across countries? This paper proposes that these, together with many of the stylized facts of corporate finance, can be explained by private benefits. Private benefits create waste and inefficiency but...

In this paper empirical results are presented concerning Resource Margin valuation models previously developed by the author. The research tests the strength of the general linkages between resource margins and valuation measures for a sample of approximately 300 US manufacturing companies...

This paper considers the issue of disclosure of hedging choices. It is shown that disclosure is the preferred choice of both managers and shareholders if it removes completely the informational asymmetry among the manager and the shareholders concerning the business opportunities and risks faced...

In this paper a family of clean-surplus models are developed from standard accounting and financial identities. The models rely on the use of non-traditional performance measures of clean surplus in relation to value-added, and growth in value-added, in order to establish market value to...

This paper argues that ethnic problems are only one aspect of political violence in Africa, while violent conflicts must be thought about as a failure of the state to perform some of its fundamental tasks. State formation in Africa is a transition process starting from an institutional endowment...