We present a dynamic agency model of investment, borrowing and payout decisions by a mature corporation operating in perfect financial markets. Risk-averse managers implement an inter-temporal strategy that maximizes their lifetime utility of managerial rents. They under-invest and smooth payout...

In 1997, France Télécom, the French telecommunications firm, went through a partial privatization. The government offered current and prior France Télécom employees the opportunity to buy portfolios of shares with various combinations of discounts, required holding periods, and levels of...

We analyse venture capital (VC) investments in 23 non-US countries and compare them to VC investments in the US. We describe how the contracts allocate cash flow, board, liquidation, and other control rights. In univariate analyses, contracts differ across legal regimes. At the same time,...

We study the investment analyses of 67 portfolio investments by 11 venture capital (VC) firms. VCs consider the attractiveness and risks of the business, management, and deal terms as well as expected post-investment monitoring. We then consider the relation of the analyses to the contractual...

In our model multiple innovators compete against each other by submitting investment proposals to an investor. The investor chooses the least expensive proposal and when to invest in it. Innovators have to provide costly effort and they learn privately the cost of investing. Multiple efforts...

We examine whether stock market-listed firms in the U.S. invest suboptimally due to agency costs resulting from separation of ownership and control. We derive testable predictions to distinguish between underinvestment due to rational “short-termism” and overinvestment due to “empire...

We examine deal-level data on private equity transactions in the UK initiated during the period 1996 to 2004 by mature private equity houses. We un-lever the deal-level equity return and adjust for (un-levered) return to quoted peers to extract a measure of "alpha" or abnormal performance of the...

We develop a model of internal governance where the self-serving actions of top management are limited by the potential reaction of subordinates. We find that internal governance can mitigate agency problems and ensure firms have substantial value, even without any external governance. Internal...

This Paper investigates the benefits and associated agency costs of using internal capital markets through affiliating with groups using data of two thousand firms from nine East Asian economies between 1994-96. We find that mature and slow-growing firms with ownership structures more likely to...

We study empirically the effect of focus (specialization) versus diversification on the return and the risk of banks using data from 105 Italian banks over the period 1993–99. Specifically, we analyse the trade-offs between (loan portfolio) focus and diversification using a unique data set...