Some argue too-big-to-fail (TBTF) status increases the value of the largest banks. In contrast, we find that the value of the largest banks is negatively related to asset size in normal times, but not during the financial crisis when TBTF status was most valuable. Further, shareholders lose when...

We investigate whether the value of large banks, defined as banks with assets in excess of the Dodd-Frank threshold for enhanced supervision, increases with the size of their assets using Tobin's q and market-to-book as our valuation measures. Many argue that large banks receive subsidies from...

From 1990 to 2011, the share of the world's initial public offering (IPO) activity outside the U.S. increased with financial globalization. In the 1990s, when financial globalization was lower, there were 0.37 U.S. IPOs for each non-U.S. IPO compared to only 0.12 in the 2000s. Consistent with...

We propose a dynamic theory of banking where deposits play the role of productive capital as in the classical Q-theory of investment for non-financial firms. A key conceptual innovation of our theory is that the stock of deposits cannot be perfectly controlled by the bank. Demand deposit...

Why do some firms enter a new sector by acquiring an existing company ("buy"), while others do so using their existing resources ("build")? Using a novel dataset constructed by merging French employer payrolls with commercial M&A datasets, we show that firms are more likely to buy when their...

We examine the labor market consequences for directors who adopt poison pills. Directors who become associated with pill adoption experience significant decreases in vote margins and increases in termination rates across all their directorships. They also experience a decrease in the likelihood...

Panel OLS and GMM-IV estimates indicate that executives respond to the adoption of a compensation clawback provision by decreasing firm risk. The mechanisms that transmit incentives to decisions and decisions to risk appear to be more conservative investment and financial policies and preemptive...

Uncertainty about management appears to affect firms' cost of borrowing and financial policies. In a sample of S&P 1500 firms between 1987 and 2010, CDS spreads, loan spreads and bond yield spreads all decline over the first three years of CEO tenure, holding other macroeconomic, firm, and...

For the last two decades, non-US firms have lower valuations than similar US firms. We study the evolution of this valuation gap to assess whether financial markets are less integrated after the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC). The valuation gap for firms from developed markets increases by...

We show that a large number of firms adopt poison pills during periods of market turmoil. In particular, during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, many firms adopted poison pills in response to declines in valuations, and stock prices increased upon their announcements. This increase is driven...