Using the staggered adoption of anti-re-characterization laws (ARL) as an exogenous shock to creditor rights, we study the causal effects of creditor rights on borrowers' accounting conservatism. ARL precludes the re-characterization of securitized assets which otherwise can be re-characterized...

Prior research suggests that there are significant differences in how investors perceive the reliability of fair values across the fair value hierarchy. An unaddressed question in this stream of research is whether cross-country differences in institutional factors are able to mediate...

Lending corruption is an important agency problem for banks. Using data from the World Bank Business Environmental Survey, we find that in countries with more lending corruption, banks give more favorable loan terms to borrowers. This relation is stronger when firms are under more financing...

When equity markets open to foreign investors, firms in these markets face significant opportunities to attract foreign capital. Using a set of countries that opened their equity markets, we find significant income-increasing earnings management in the year of opening, with substantial...

Public firms are becoming increasingly interconnected through institutional investors' stock ownership, specifically through cross-ownership, in which an institutional investor has a significant stake in multiple firms in the same industry. When a firm seeks external financing for its investment...

In analyzing a large panel of elections in 56 countries for the period 1989-2012, we show that political uncertainty surrounding elections can affect asymmetric cost behaviors to activity changes (i.e., cost stickiness). The asymmetry in cost behaviors is stronger during election years than in...

We investigate the impact of political institutions on corporate risk-taking. We posit that the extent of political constraints on the government affect corporate risk-taking along both direct and indirect mechanisms. Using a large sample of non-financial firms from 77 countries covering the...