We explore the relation between family ownership and corporate investment policy. Our analysis centers on two incentives, risk aversion and extended investment horizons, which potentially influence the level and type of investments that family firms undertake. We find that family firms devote...

Shareholder valuations are economically and statistically positively correlated with more powerful independent directors, their power gauged by social network power centrality measures. Sudden deaths of powerful independent directors significantly reduce shareholder value, consistent with...

In medieval Europe, manufacturers sold durable goods to anonymous consumers in distant markets, this essay argues, by making products with conspicuous characteristics. Examples of these unique, observable traits included cloth of distinctive colors, fabric with unmistakable weaves, and pewter...

Organized crime is a disincentive for investment and business activity. We use murders as a proxy for presence of regional organized crime and study the relation between direct foreign investment and organized crime for different industries in Mexico. Our contribution is the focus on sectoral...

In this study we present a comparison of investment and production per head in 21 areas of the World, and we find that in many poor areas there has been little improvement during the period 2000-2010. One of the main causes of this disappointing result has been the stagnation in many countries,...

We analyse the evolution of economic development of countries of Asia and Pacific for the period 2000-2010, and present the estimation of a cross-section model of 30 countries in year 2010, in order to relate economic development with manufacturing and investment. We compare the results of...

To achieve the United Nations MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) in less developed Asian countries it is required to increase international cooperation to reach higher educational level of population and investment per head. In this article we analyze the evolution of economic development and...

Do legal institutions governing financial contracts affect the nature of real investments in the economy? We develop a simple model and provide evidence that the answer to this question is yes. We consider a levered firm's choice of investment between innovative and conservative technologies, on...

Two of the most salient issues in research about intangibles and intellectual capital are the lack of a common terminology, and the lack of development of adequate measurement tools for the constructs related to intangibles. The aim of that paper is twofold: first, establishing a set of...