We examine why corporate governance varies widely across countries and across firms, and why such variation matters. Using a proprietary database from Governance Metrics International on corporate governance practices across a large number of countries and firms for 2006-2011 and employing a...

We examine why corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices vary across countries and firms, and evaluate the value implications. Using a sample of 30,399 firm-year observations representing 4,279 firms from 49 countries over the 2003–2015 period and applying hierarchical linear modeling,...

We explore the forces that drive cash savings in equity issuance using the average cash-savings rate instead of the marginal cash-savings rate that overstates individual issuers’ cash savings. Equity issuers with high investment opportunities save more cash in anticipation of greater cash...

Share repurchases have become persistent. Firms use cash flow as the primary source of capital to finance repeated share repurchases. This internal financing increases (decreases) retained earnings (paid-in-capital) in the capital structure and weakens the sensitivity of investment to cash flow....

We examine whether a firm’s operating inflexibility affects its carbon footprint. Using a large sample of firms from 30 countries over the 2003–2021 period, we provide first evidence that operating inflexibility reduces firms’ greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The negative effect of...

This paper investigates the relationship between national culture and cross-country variations in bank liquidity creation. We hypothesize that banks in individualistic societies create more liquidity because of risk-taking and overconfidence bias. On the other hand, a better access to soft...

We discover that social capital is associated with higher mortgage approval rates, shorter screening times, longer maturities, lower interest rates, and reduced loan delinquency rates. The results hold when conditioning on extensive consumer and market characteristics, a battery of fixed...

We investigate the role of ownership structure and investor protection in postprivatization corporate governance. We find that the government relinquishes control over time, mainly to the benefit of local institutions and foreign investors. We also show that private ownership tends to...

Motivated by recent research on the costs and benefits of political connection, we examine the cost of equity capital of politically connected firms. Using propensity score matching models, we find that politically connected firms enjoy a lower cost of equity capital than their non-connected...

We examine the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the cost of equity capital for a large sample of U.S. firms. Using several approaches to estimate firms' ex ante cost of equity, we find that firms with better CSR rankings exhibit cheaper equity financing. In particular, our...