Showing 1 - 10 of 47
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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005497765
We provide a new explanation to the limited stock market participation puzzle. In deciding whether to buy stocks, investors factor in the risk of being cheated. The perception of this risk is a function not only of the objective characteristics of the stock, but also of the subjective...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005497869
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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005498046
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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005504447
This paper studies the impact that capital market imperfections have on the natural selection of the most efficient firms by estimating the effect of the pre-deregulation level of leverage on the survival of trucking firms after the Carter deregulation. Highly leveraged carriers are less likely...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005504576
We show that the development of the financial sector does not change monotonically over time. In particular, we find that by most measures, countries were more financially developed in 1913 than in 1980 and only recently have they surpassed their 1913 levels. This pattern is inconsistent with...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005504599
Several papers study the effect of trust by using the answer to the World Values Survey (WVS) question “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?” to measure the level of trust. Glaeser et al. (2000) question...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005504794
Motivated by theories of the firm, which we classify as "technological" or "organizational," we analyze the determinants of firm size across industries and across countries in a sample of 15 European countries. We find that, on average, firms facing larger markets are larger. At the industry...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005136531
This Paper analyses the interaction between corporate taxes and corporate governance. We show that the characteristics of a taxation system affect the extraction of private benefits by company insiders. A higher tax rate increases the amount of income insiders divert and thus worsens governance...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005136786
Economists have been reluctant to rely on culture as a possible determinant of economic phenomena. The notion of culture is so broad and the channels through which it can enter the economic discourse so vague that it is difficult to design testable hypotheses. In this paper we show this does...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005661450