This Paper investigates valuation effects of share block transfers and employs agency theory to explain the determinants of block premia. A sample of transactions from Poland is used to measure benefits and costs of ownership concentration. Block premia are found to be substantially lower than...

This Paper documents the aggregate trends in the foreign listings of companies and analyses both their distinctive pre-listing characteristics and their post-listing performance relative to other companies. In the 1986-97 interval, many European companies listed abroad, but did so mainly on US...

Despite the increasing integration of capital markets, geography has not yet become irrelevant to finance. Between 1986 and 1997, European public companies have increasingly listed abroad, especially in the US. We relate the cross-listing decisions to the characteristics of the destination...

This Paper investigates the impact of ownership patterns on the way the firm is monitored, on the liquidity of its shares, and on its stock price. Building on the literature showing that local mutual funds (funds holding geographically close firms) enjoy superior returns due to private...

We study the decisions of international asset managers to outsource portfolio management of their funds and we link these decisions to market integration. Using a structural model of selfselection, we endogenize the decision to outsource in a comprehensive sample of international mutual funds...

We follow the evolution of ownership structure in a sample of 80 Israeli companies that unified their dual-class shares in the 1990s, and compare it with a control sample of firms that maintained their dual share structure at least until 2000. Our main findings are as follows. First, controlling...

We focus on an exogenous event that changes the cost of capital of a company – the addition of its stock to the S&P 500 index – and investigate how companies react to it by modifying their corporate financial and investment policies. This allows us to test capital structure theories in an...

This paper solves for a firm's optimal cash holding policy within a continuous time, contingent claims framework that has been extended to incorporate most of the significant contracting frictions that have been identified in the corporate finance literature. Under the optimal policy the firm...

Under the bookbuilding procedure, an investment banker solicits bids for shares from institutional investors prior to pricing the issue. After collecting this demand information, the investment banker prices the issue and allocates shares to the investors. We examine the books from 39...

In this Paper we introduce flexibility as an economic concept and apply it to the firm’s security-issuance decisions and capital structure choice. Flexibility is the ability to make decisions that one thinks are best even when others disagree. Firms value flexibility because it allows...