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...

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...

Using a comprehensive hedge fund activism dataset, we find that activist hedge funds are about 52% more likely to target firms with female CEOs compared to firms with male CEOs. We find that firm fundamentals, the existence of a “glass cliff,” gender discrimination bias, and hedge fund...

This study investigates whether CEO perquisite of borrowing firms plays any significant role, both in terms of price and non-price settings, in financial contracts and reveals that lending banks demand significantly higher return (spread), more collateral, and stricter covenants from firms with...

China employs a unique foreign bank entry model. Instead of allowing full foreign control of domestic banks, foreign investors are only permitted to be involved in the local banks as minority shareholders. At the same time, foreign strategic investors are expected to commit to bank corporate...

Directors from academia served on the boards of around 40% of S&P 1,500 firms over the 1998-2011 period. This paper investigates the effects of academic directors on corporate governance and firm performance. We find that companies with directors from academia are associated with higher...

We investigate how shareholder-and-debtholder conflicts of interest affect corporate tax avoidance using a unique setting of the affiliated and unaffiliated commercial bankers’ board representation. We find that appointing affiliated banker directors, but not unaffiliated banker directors,...

We analyze how creditor rights affect the nonsynchronicity of global corporate credit default swap spreads (CDS-NS). We find that CDS-NS is negatively related to the country-level creditor-control rights, especially to the “restrictions on reorganization” component, where...

This paper investigates the role of corporate boards in bank loan contracting. We find that when corporate boards are more independent, both price and nonprice loan terms (e.g., interest rates, collateral, covenants, and performance-pricing provisions) are more favorable and syndicated loans...

We test the relationship between takeover protection and voluntary disclosure in a setting of antitakeover laws in a firm's state of incorporation. After correcting for the endogeneity of firms' incorporation choice, we find that firms incorporated in states with more antitakeover laws have...