The debate over how firm stakeholder engagement is tied to preserving shareholder wealth has received growing attention in recent years, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. Against this backdrop, we examine the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and stock market...

Using a large sample of firms from developed and developing countries over the 1990 to 2010 period, we document evidence of zero-leverage firms around the world. Further, we find strong and robust evidence that in countries with high scores on Schwartz's Conservatism and Mastery indices as well...

We examine the effect of economic policy uncertainty on the relation between investment and the cost of capital. Using the news-based index developed by Baker, Bloom, and Davis (2016) for twenty-one countries, we find that the strength of the negative relation between investment and the cost of...

Recent events, most notably the Global Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, have made it increasingly apparent that liquidity is synonymous with corporate survival. In this paper, we explore how governments can fulfill an important need as suppliers of liquidity. Building on the financing...

We examine how corporate environmental responsibility (CER) affects the cost of equity capital for manufacturing firms in 30 countries. Using several approaches to estimate firms' ex ante equity financing costs, we find in regressions that control for firm-level characteristics as well as...

We examine the role of national culture — an important informal institution — in the profit reinvestment decisions of small firms in emerging markets. Prior economic development literature focuses on formal institutions as determinants of growth. However, in emerging markets where formal...

Using newly collected data on the ultimate ownership structure of publicly traded firms in nine East Asian economies, we find that family control is negatively related to the dividend payout ratio. Family firms are less (more) likely to increase (omit) dividends than non-family firms. These...

We examine the governance role of multiple large shareholder structures (MLSS) to determine their valuation effects in a sample of 1,252 publicly traded firms from nine East Asian economies. We find that the presence, number, and size of multiple large shareholders are associated with a...

Using a sample of cross-listed firms from 51 countries and a difference-in-differences approach that exploits corporate governance shocks induced by cross-listing in the U.S., we find that firms tend to engage in less tax avoidance after cross-listing. This effect is more pronounced for firms...

We examine the relation between state residual ownership and bank risk-taking for privatized banks from 45 countries. Applying propensity score matching, we find that privatized banks tend to exhibit higher levels of risk-taking post-privatization than their publicly listed non-privatized...