We provide a comprehensive review of China's financial system, and explore directions of future development. First, the current financial system is dominated by a large banking sector. In recent years banks have made considerable progress in reducing the amount of non-performing loans and...

We examine the determinants of the size and composition of corporate boards for a sample of 82 U.S. companies that survived during the period 1935-2000. Our hypotheses lead to predictions that firm size, growth opportunities, merger activity, and geographical expansion are important determinants...

After the completion of an Mamp;A transaction, the target firm is delisted but some analysts who covered it retain coverage of the merged firm. We hypothesize that this decision is based on two factorsmdash;the analyst's ability to cover the merged firm and his or her assessment of the Mamp;A...

Cross-sectional research finds that corporate financing choices are not only affected by firm and industry factors, but also by country institutional factors. This study focuses on the roles of public governance in firm financing patterns. To conduct a natural experiment that avoids endogeneity,...

We examine the relation between bidder returns and the probability of CEO turnover in acquiring firms. Using a sample of 714 acquisitions during 1990 to 1998, we find that 47% of CEOs of acquiring firms are replaced within five years, including 27% by internal governance, 16% by takeovers, and...

This paper investigates the relation between financial development and firm size. The model shows that the quality of laws, by affecting the level of monitoring costs, has an effect on risk sharing and, through this channel, on the investor basis and the availability of external finance to...

This paper examines how firm characteristics, legal rules and financial development affect corporate finance decisions. In contrast to the existing literature, I use data on unlisted companies to show that institutions play an important role in determining the extent of agency problems. In...

I show that liquidity constraints are related to individuals' occupational choice. A proxy for the prospect of becoming liquidity constrained affects negatively the probability of being self-employed as opposed to being employed in the private or the public sectors. Furthermore, individuals with...

We relate trade credit to product characteristics and aspects of bank-firm relationships and document three main empirical regularities. First, the use of trade credit is associated with the nature of the transacted good. In particular, suppliers of differentiated products and services have...

We show that individuals residing in highly entrepreneurial neighborhoods are more likely to become entrepreneurs and invest more in their own businesses, even though their entrepreneurial profits are lower and their alternative job opportunities more attractive. These findings are robust to the...