​We show that firms led by politically partisan CEOs are associated with a higher level of corporate tax sheltering than firms led by nonpartisan CEOs. Specifically, Republican CEOs are associated with more corporate tax sheltering even when their wealth is not tied with that of shareholders...

We assess the importance of industry peers for a firm's own decision making strategy, using a rich sample of data covering 47 countries and 87 different industries between 1990 and 2011. Following the instrumental variable approach suggested by Leary and Roberts (2014), we find that, similar to...

Do banks use credit default swap hedging to substitute for loan sales? By tracking banks' lending exposures and CDS positions on individual firms, we find that banks use CDS hedging to complement rather than to substitute for loan sales. Consequently, bank loan sales are higher for firms that...

​We test five hypotheses on whether banks use CDS to hedge corporate loans, provide credit enhancements, obtain regulatory capital relief, and exploit banking relationship and private information. Linking large banks' CDS positions and syndicated lending on individual firms, we observe strong...

We augment the LLSV creditor rights index with a new "restructuring index" that measures the incentives provided to creditors to grant concessions outside formal bankruptcy. We study the joint impact of the two indexes on a firm's leverage policy. We show that the two indexes have at most a...

This study examines whether foreign institutional investors (FIIs) help explain variation in corporate tax avoidance and whether mechanisms such as tax morality, investment horizon, and corporate governance underlie the relation between FIIs and tax avoidance. We find robust evidence that FIIs...

There is scant evidence on how risk-taking incentives impact specific firm risks. This has implications for board oversight of managerial risk taking, firms' development of comparative advantage in taking particular risks, and compensation design. We examine this question for exchange rate risk....

We investigate the impacts of improved intellectual property rights (IPR) protection on cross-border M&A performance. Using multiple measures of IPR protection and based on generalized difference-in-differences estimates, we find that countries with better IPR protection attract significantly...

This study investigates the effectiveness of government intervention in rescuing bearish markets in a transition economy. Focusing on a pre- and a post-intervention period, the findings reveal that government intervention successfully rescued bearish markets in China and led to a fundamental...

This study investigates the relationship between politically connected firms and their access to bank financing in a post-communist eras in Poland. Overall, it finds that "recent" political connections do influence access to bank financing and the value of such connections increased during the...