We analyze the link between creditor rights and firms' investment policies, proposing that stronger creditor rights in bankruptcy reduce corporate risk-taking. In cross-country analysis, we find that stronger creditor rights induce greater propensity of firms to engage in diversifying...

We develop a model of internal governance where the self-serving actions of top management are limited by the potential reaction of subordinates. Internal governance can mitigate agency problems and ensure that firms have substantial value, even with little or no external governance by...

Stringent labor laws can provide firms a commitment device to not punish short-run failures and thereby spur their employees to pursue value-enhancing innovative activities. Using patents and citations as proxies for innovation, we identify this effect by exploiting the time-series variation...

This paper examines the relationship between innovation and firms' dependence on external capital by analyzing the innovation activities of privately-held and publicly-traded firms. We find that public firms in external finance dependent industries generate patents of higher quantity, quality,...

We propose and test a theory of corporate liquidity management in which credit lines provided by banks to firms are a form of monitored liquidity insurance. Bank monitoring and resulting credit line revocations help control illiquidity-seeking behavior by firms. Firms with high liquidity risk...

We address the paradox that financial innovations aimed at risk-sharing appear to have made the world riskier. Financial innovations facilitate hedging idiosyncratic risks among agents; however, aggregate risks can be hedged only with liquid assets. When risk-sharing is primitive, agents...

We model the interplay between cash and debt policies in the presence of financial constraints. While saving cash allows financially constrained firms to hedge against future income shortfalls, reducing debt - "saving borrowing capacity" - is a more effective way of securing future investment in...

We study empirically the effect of focus (specialization) vs. diversification on the return and the risk of banks using data from 105 Italian banks over the period 1993-1999. Specifically, we analyze the tradeoffs between (loan portfolio) focus and diversification using a unique data set that is...

We propose that stronger creditor rights in bankruptcy affect corporate investment choice by reducing corporate risk-taking. In cross-country analysis, we find that stronger creditor rights induce greater propensity of firms to engage in diversifying acquisitions that are value-reducing, to...

Suppose risk-averse managers can hedge the aggregate component of their exposure to firm's cash flow risk by trading in financial markets, but cannot hedge their firm-specific exposure. This gives them incentives to pass up firm-specific projects in favor of standard projects that contain...