We use enterprise data to study the determinants of investment in Czech industry during the period from 1993 through 1994, a period when the transition toward a market economy was rapidly gaining momentum. We investigate accelerator type models modified to include financial variables intended to...

We investigate the relation between family ownership and the informational content of short sales in U.S. publicly-traded firms. Our analysis indicates that family firms, in aggregate, experience a substantially higher volume of abnormal short sales prior to negative earnings shocks than...

Motivated by the potential for opportunistic behavior in pay decisions, recent SEC and IRS regulations essentially preclude inside directors from serving on a firm's compensation committee. In this paper, we examine whether greater compensation committee independence promotes shareholder...

Critics advocate eliminating dual class shares. We find that founding families control 89% of dual class firms, potentially confounding economic inferences regarding these structures. Using industry, market and Fama-French excess returns, we find a buy-and-hold strategy of dual class family...

Creditor reliance on accounting-based debt covenants suggests that debtors are potentially concerned with board of director characteristics that influence the financial accounting process. In a sample of Samp;P 500 firms, we find that the cost of debt financing is inversely related to board...

We investigate the impact of founding-family ownership structure on the agency cost of debt. We find that founding-family ownership is common in large, publicly traded firms and is related, both statistically and economically, to a lower cost of debt financing. The evidence also indicates that...

We empirically investigate the relationship between corporate governance structure and diversification. Using a sample of 199 firms beginning in 1985 and following these firms through 1994, we examine 1) if governance structure is significantly different between focused and diversified firms; 2)...

Founding families are in unique positions of power and control that enable them to expropriate wealth from minority shareholders. However, recent research suggests that in large publicly trade companies, firms with founding family presence outperform those with more dispersed ownership...

Conventional wisdom suggests that family shareholders should exit their large, concentrated equity stakes in publicly traded firms and seek benefits arising from diversification. However, founding families maintain a substantive and undiversified stake in many publicly traded U.S. firms. The...

Exchanges and index providers increasingly push firms to equalize shareholder voting rights. We explore the potential harm arising from dual-class structures by studying the identity and returns of minority shareholders. First, we find that sophisticated investors disproportionately own...