Shareholders in distressed firms should profit from shifting to more risky assets, but there is little empirical evidence documenting such behavior. We find that this weak evidence is consistent with creditors being somewhat able to control the investment policies of distressed firms if distress...

In this article, we show that only distressed firms not identified as distressed by creditors are able to transfer wealth from creditors to shareholders. Using the number of years to future bankruptcy as a proxy for genuine distress and measures based on observable firm characteristics as...

We study whether industrial firms risk-shift in response to distress risk increases induced through hurricane strikes. Using new proxies capturing deliberate managerial decisions about the risk of a firm's operating segment portfolio, differences tests suggest that hurricane strikes prompt...

Previous estimates of the mean 3-year buy-and hold abnormal returns of German IPO stocks range from -52.20% to 1.66%. It is difficult to justify this significant variation in abnormal returns, given the almost identical calculation procedures and the large overlap in sample periods. We argue...

Prior studies find that entrenched managers destroy firm value by choosing lower risk negative NPV projects. In this paper, I argue that enhanced monitoring by boards and internal controls established following the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and concurrent reforms to stock...

This paper uses FAS 123R regulation to examine how reduction in CEO compensation incentives affects managerial 'playing-it-safe' behavior. Using proxies reflecting deliberate managerial efforts to change firm risk, difference-in-difference tests show that affected firms drastically reduce both...

The dissertation involves an investigation into the circumstances of international competitiveness and how it is pursued by firms from different sugar producing and marketing nations. Understanding of competitiveness has primarily been pursued in terms of economic variables and market...

We challenge the common wisdom that patent protection (compared to no or weak patent protection) makes the consumers worse off by reducing product-market competition unless it increases innovation significantly. We show that the absence of patent protection may encourage horizontal merger and...

We show that information complementarities play an important role in the spillover of transparency shocks. We exploit staggered revelation of financial misconduct by S&P500 firms and find that the implied cost of capital increases for “close” industry peers relative to “distant” peers....