Transactions take place in the firm rather than in the market because the firm offers agents" who make specific investments power. Past literature emphasizes the allocation of ownership as the" primary mechanism by which the firm does this. Within the contractibility assumptions of this"...

Firms that maintain no formal record of actions and events would hardly be considered well managed. Yet, organizations that require the recording of actions and the filing of reports are often labeled bureaucratic' and inefficient. This paper argues that the thin line between efficient...

This paper empirically analyzes the determinants of an initial public offering (IPO) and the consequences of this decision on a company's investment and financial policy. We compare both the ex ante and the ex post characteristics of IPOs with those of a large sample of privately held companies...

In this paper I argue that corporate finance theory, empirical research, practical applications, and policy recommendations are deeply rooted in an underlying theory of the firm. I also argue that while the existing theories have delivered very important and useful insights, they seem to be...

In this paper we discuss the role of the media in pressuring corporate managers and directors to behave in ways that are 'socially acceptable'. Sometimes this coincides with shareholders' value maximization, others not. We provide both anecdotal and systematic evidence that media affect...

This essay summarizes my own personal view of what corporate governance is about. I" argue that it makes sense to discuss corporate governance only in an incomplete contract world. " In this world, the notion of corporate governance is intrinsically related to the definition of the" firm. In...

What external control mechanisms are most effective in detecting corporate fraud? To address this question we study in depth all reported cases of corporate fraud in companies with more than 750 million dollars in assets between 1996 and 2004. We find that fraud detection does not rely on one...

We investigate the determinants of capital structure choice by analyzing the financing decisions of public firms in the major industrialized countries. At an aggregate level, firm leverage is fairly similar across the G-7 countries. We find that factors identified by previous studies as...

Major technological, regulatory, and institutional changes have made finance more widely available in recent years, amounting to a bone fide 'financial revolution'. In this article, we focus on the impact the financial revolution has had on the way firms are (or should be) organized and managed,...