As domestic sources of outside finance are limited in many countries around the world, it is important to understand factors that influence whether foreign investors provide capital to a country's firms. We study 4,409 firms from twenty-nine countries to assess whether and why concerns about...

This article uses managerial control rights data for over 5000 firms from 31 countries to examine the net costs and benefits of cash holdings. We find that when external country-level shareholder protection is weak, firm values are lower when controlling managers hold more cash. Further, when...

As domestic sources of outside finance are limited in many countries around the world, it is important to understand factors that influence whether foreign investors provide capital to a country's firms. We study 4,409 firms from twenty-nine countries to assess whether and why concerns about...

We study whether and how family control affects valuation and corporate decisions during the 2008--2009 financial crisis using a sample of more than 8,500 firms from 35 countries. We find that family-controlled firms underperform significantly, they cut investment more relative to other firms,...

We propose a new, valuation-based measure of world equity market segmentation. While we observe decreased levels of segmentation in many countries, the level of segmentation remains significant in emerging markets. We characterize the factors that account for variation in market segmentation...

Given the cross-sectional and temporal variation in their liquidity, emerging equity markets provide an ideal setting to examine the impact of liquidity on expected returns. Our main liquidity measure is a transformation of the proportion of zero daily firm returns, averaged over the month. We...

This article uses a unique dataset to study how firms managed liquidity during the 2008--2011 financial crisis. Our analysis provides new insights on interactions between internal liquidity, external funds, and real corporate decisions, such as investment and employment. We first describe how...