This paper studies the motive of issuing floating-priced convertibles or warrants, known as death spirals, in a country where private benefit of control is high. Using a total of 199 death spiral issuances by public firms listed in the Korea Stock Exchange during 1998–2006, we find a number of...

In this paper, I give a detailed account of the creation and the evolution of Korea Investment Corporation (KIC) – a sovereign wealth fund established in 2005 by the Korean government. In doing so, I highlight three of its unique features. First, the case of KIC effectively shows the problem...

We discuss empirical challenges in multicountry studies of the effects of firm-level corporate governance on firm value, focusing on emerging markets. We assess the severe data, “construct validity”, and endogeneity issues in these studies, propose methods to respond to those issues, and...

Prior work in emerging markets provides evidence that better corporate governance predicts higher market value, but very little evidence on the specific channels through which governance can increase value. We provide evidence, from a natural experiment in Korea, that reduced tunneling is an...

This paper measures the value of shareholder activism focusing on outside blockholders who switch their investment purpose from passive to active but are not likely to engage in control-related activities. Unlike the usual 5% ownership disclosure, a switch does not necessarily involve additional...

Different categories of foreign portfolio investors in Korea have differences as well as similarities in their trading behavior before and during the currency crisis. First, non-resident institutional investors are always positive feedback traders, whereas resident investors were negative...