This paper documents for a sample of 327 US acquisitions between 1975 and 1987 three forces that systematically reduce the announcement day return of bidding firms. The returns to bidding shareholders are lower when their firm diversifies, when it buys a rapidly growing target , and when the...

Recently collected data show that, within any manufacturing industry, vertically integrated firms tend to have larger, higher productivity plants, account for the bulk of sales, and also sell externally most of the inputs they produce. In a weak contracting environment characteristic of...

This paper links the impending vesting of CEO equity to reductions in real investment. Existing studies measure the manager's short-term concerns using the sensitivity of his equity to the stock price. However, in myopia theories, the driver of short-termism is not the magnitude of incentives...

Using a survey of 800 CEOs in 22 emerging economies we show that CEOs' management styles and philosophy vary with the control rights and involvement of the owning family and founder: CEOs of firms with greater family involvement have more hierarchical management, and feel more accountable to...

In this paper we examine the causal impact of competition on management quality. We analyze the hospital sector where geographic proximity is a key determinant of competition, and English public hospitals where political competition can be used to construct instrumental variables for market...