We examine the relation between legal, extra-legal and political institutional factors and earnings quality of banks across countries. We predict that earnings quality is higher in countries with legal, extra-legal and political systems that reduce the consumption of private control benefits by...

We use agency theory to explore how analyst coverage is influenced by the managerial entrenchment associated with the staggered board. The evidence suggests that firms with staggered boards attract significantly larger analyst following. We also document that firms with staggered boards...

This paper investigates the optimal retirement of an individual in the presence of involuntary unemployment risks and borrowing constraints in a complete market with frictions. We use an intensity model and loading factors to illustrate the involuntary unemployment risks and frictions in...

Studies have analyzed the impact of firm and issue characteristics but not liquidity and solvency components of financial distress on the use of bond covenants. Using a comprehensive database of corporate bonds from 2001 to 2012, we find that firm liquidity, measured by standardized Lambda, has...

We study the relation between state ownership and cash holdings in China’s share-issue privatized firms from 2000 to 2012. We find that the level of cash holdings increases as state ownership declines. For the average firm in our sample, a 10 percentage-point decline in state ownership leads...

The effects of corporate governance on optimal capital structure choices have been well documented, though without offering empirical evidence about the impact of corporate governance quality on the adjustment speed toward an optimal capital structure. This study simultaneously considers two...

Regulators and governance activists are pressuring firms to abolish CEO duality (the Chief Executive Officer is also the Chairman of the Board). However, the literature provides mixed evidence on the relation between CEO duality and firm performance. Using the exogenous shock of the 1989...

In this paper we investigate the impact of institutional ownership on UK mergers and acquisitions. We employ a comprehensive sample of M&As conducted by UK acquirers from 2000 to 2010, thus including a full cycle of peak and trough in M&A waves. We find that institutional investors increase the...

We examine financial distress and tax aggressiveness spanning the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008 and the impact of the interaction between board independence and firm-specific financial distress on tax aggressiveness. Our regression results show that both financial distress and the GFC...

We compare and contrast the performance of cross-border and domestic venture capital (VC) investments in terms of the time it takes VC backers to exit portfolio companies through initial public offering (IPO), trade sale (M&A), or other routes. Initial analysis suggests that cross-border...