We examine firms' motivation to change their main bank and how this switch affects loans, interest payments and firm performance after switching. Applying treatment effect analysis on unique firm-bank matched Ukrainian data, we find that larger and highly leveraged companies are more likely to...

The empirical literature on the effect of dispersion of executive remuneration (i.e., the intensity of a tournament structure) on the comparative performance of companies is mixed. Studies on US data tend to find strong positive effects but non-US studies tend to fail to find an effect. This...

This paper studies the effects of social capital on access to bank financing. Based on a Chinese nationwide survey our analysis suggests that entrepreneurs who spend more time on social activities are more likely to obtain a loan from commercial banks. In addition, we find that membership of...

This paper takes advantage of a recent policy experiment in Ukraine's secondary education system to study the effect of stricter requirements for proficiency in the state language on linguistic minority students' demand for, as well as opportunities to pursue, further studies at the university...

This paper studies the relationship between directors' human capital and the company's performance. In particular, we focus on the effect of non-executive directors who are also executive in other firms (independent executives, IE). The analysis is based on a unique dataset of publicly traded...

This paper investigates the determinants of liability maturity choice in emerging markets using a unique panel of 4,500 Ukrainian firms during the period 2000-2006. Our estimates confirm the importance of agency costs, liquidity, signaling, and taxes for the liability term structure of firms...

We analyze the impact of a freeway interchange collapse in the San Francisco Bay area on the difference in airfare quotes for travel into the area's main airports. The incident temporarily made Oakland airport a less attractive choice for traveling to San Francisco. Using a sample of fare quotes...

We estimate firms' cash flow sensitivity of cash to empirically test how the financial system's structure and activity level influence their financial constraints. For this purpose we merge Almeida et al. (2004), a path-breaking new design for evaluating a firm's financial constraints, with...

This paper analyzes the effects of parliamentary election cycles on the Turkish banking system. Using annual bank-level data representing all banks in Turkey during 1963-2005, we find that there are meaningful differences in the structure of assets, liabilities and financial performance across...

The paper explores factors that lead to accumulation or decumulation of firms' cash reserves. In particular, we empirically examine whether additional future fixed capital and R&D investment expenditures induce firms to change their liquidity ratio while considering the role of market...