This paper empirically investigates the responsiveness of fiscal policy to business cycles and the effectiveness of fiscal policy in reducing economic fluctuations. From regressions on the responsiveness of fiscal policy to business cycles, we find that the government's current expenditures and...

This paper investigates whether foreign institutional investors in emerging markets can enhance shareholder value. We pay special attention to two dimensions of investor heterogeneity: whether an investor declares itself as an activist, and whether an investor comes from a country with a strong...

This paper examines how outside directors facilitate corporate R&D investment in the face of family control and the discrepancy between share ownership and decision control. Our panel regression analysis of large Korean firms (1998 to 2005) shows that mere addition of a shareholder-oriented...

Bankers on the board are expected to act as a fund-raiser and to help lowering financial costs, but they can impose conflicts of interest between shareholders and creditors. We empirically analyse the impact of banker-directors on corporate leverage and investment, using Korean firm data during...

This article critically examines two conventional ideas about cross-ownership: (1) it is almost impossible to takeover a cross-owned group of firms; (2) the controlling shareholder of a cross-owned group of firms extracts certain benefit from his/her control right. Through a simple analysis, we...

This paper examines the role of fiscal policy in the Korean financial crisis and the subsequent recovery from it. We specifically address three questions: Was Korea’s fiscal policy prior to the crisis conservative, or were there large hidden contingent liabilities not captured in the official...

This paper examines whether the dividend valuation changed after corporate accounting scandals such as that of Enron in October 2001 broke out. We find that dividend increasing firms experienced positive abnormal returns in the industry affected by corporate scandals up to four months after the...