A reverse merger takes place when a public company, commonly known as a “shell”, acquires a private operating company through a share exchange transaction. The public shell typically has no business operations, but is valuable because of its public trading status. Post-merger, the operating...

We build a model of an IPO for firms with private information about their earnings profile over time and test the model’s predictions using a complete sample of newly listed Chinese companies between 1992 and 2007. The model predicts that IPO size is positively correlated with short-term...

Based on the social analysis framework of Williamson, we argue that national culture – especially the individualism/collectivism dimension – located in the social embeddedness level can guide behaviors and decisions in a country, including the choice of exchange rate regime. We argue that...

Recent research suggests that collectivism breeds corruption in bank lending. This finding, together with the stickiness of culture, poses a direct challenge to economic growth in collectivist societies. In this paper we address this grim outlook by examining the types of firms that are...

We investigate the influence of national culture on corporate debt maturity choice. Based on the framework of Williamson, we argue that culture located in social embeddedness level can shape contracting environments by serving as an informal constraint that affects human actors' incentives and...

This paper examines how national culture, in particular collectivism, influences corruption in bank lending. We hypothesize that interdependent self-construal and particularist norms in collectivist countries lead to a higher level of lending corruption through their influence on both the...

Using a large sample of firms from developed and developing countries over the 1990 to 2010 period, we document evidence of zero-leverage firms around the world. Further, we find strong and robust evidence that in countries with high scores on Schwartz's Conservatism and Mastery indices as well...