Our paper tests a key prediction of property rights theory, specifically, that agents will respond to marginal incentives embedded in property rights when making non-contractible, revenue-enhancing investments. (Grossman and Hart, 1986; Hart and Moore, 1990). Using rich project-level data from the...

We examine whether and why the value of diversification changed during the 2008–2009 financial crisis. We find that diversified firms increased in value relative to single-segment firms during the crisis, a result that is not driven by the endogeneity of either financing constraints or firms'...