This paper explores the relation between ownership structures and capital structures in Russia-an economy with a state-run banking sector, weak corporate governance, and highly concentrated ownership. We find that firms with the state as controlling shareholder have significantly higher leverage...

Introduction of the euro altered corporate financing markets for the euro zone firms in an unprecedented way. Since 1999, firms from the euro zone countries are able to raise funds in their home currency in the large common currency market. I find that while stock returns in most countries in...

Finland experienced an extremely severe economic depression in the early 1990s. In the midst of this crisis, significant new legislation was passed that increased supervisory powers of financial market regulators and reformed bankruptcy procedures, significantly decreasing the protection of...

A sweeping and protracted reform of corporate law took place in Finland in the 1970s. The reform brought significant improvements to investor protection and, similar to the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act, tightened disclosure rules at the cost of increasing the work load in corporate reporting. We find...

We study the value of innovation in a case study of one of the most visible innovative products in recent years, Apple’s iPhone. The value effects of news announcements, patent publications, and trademarks relating to iPhone are taken into account. Our estimate of the lower bound on the value...

We estimate the private value of Apple’s iPhone by observing abnormal stock market reactions to news announcements and patent publications related to the innovation. Our estimate of the lower bound on the market valuation of iPhone is fairly high, at minimum 30 billion U.S. (event day)...