This paper examines the impact of agency conicts on corporate nancing decisions. Werst build a dynamic contingent claims model in which nancing policy results from a trade-obetween tax benets, contracting frictions, and agency conicts. In our setting, partially-entrenched managers set the rms'...

After the end of communism enterprises in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) were marked by low levels of labor productivity, mainly because of too high employment levels. According to economic theory, the corporate capital structure can be an important element in the restructuring process. But...

This paper examines the propensity of firms to comove in investment decisions. Although stock return comovement and herding among investors received considerable attention in existing work, little is known about correlated investment behavior of firms. After controlling for the similarity of...

We derive and develop a simple and intuitive model that shines fresh light on the relentless debate over whether corporate ownership converges to the Berle-Means modern corporation with high stock ownership dispersion. Our model takes into account the importance of both protective legal...

We study the efficiency of capital allocations at state-controlled and privately owned business groups in China. Using highly granular data on within-group capital transfers, we document stark differences: while private groups allocate more capital to units with better investment opportunities,...

We study the efficiency of capital allocations at state-controlled and privately owned business groups in China. Using highly granular data on within-group capital transfers, we document stark differences: while private groups allocate more capital to units with better investment opportunities,...

This paper aims to shed light on the alleged contradiction between the observed conglomerate discount and a value creating effect of diversification itself. For this reason, we apply endogenous switching regressions on a sample of 51,878 US-firm years recorded over the years 1992-2012 in order...

We study a wide-spread yet unexplored corporate governance phenomenon: the pledging of company stock by insiders as collateral for personal bank loans. Utilizing a regulatory change that exogenously decreases pledging, we document a negative causal impact of pledging on shareholder wealth. We...

This article examines the impact of the divergence between corporate insiders' control rights and cash-flow rights on firms' external finance constraints via generalized method of moments estimation of an investment Euler equation. Using a large sample of U.S. firms during the 1994–2002...

Equity risk premiums are a central component of every risk and return model in finance and are a key input into estimating costs of equity and capital in both corporate finance and valuation. Given their importance, it is surprising how haphazard the estimation of equity risk premiums remains in...