We model the vulnerability of an economy to a financial crisis as arising from the interaction of the degree of economic specialization and the intermediated financing of the investment opportunities. The probability of a financial crisis is shown to increase in the degree of economic...

Permanent or long-term large shareholders have different governance incentives and mechanisms from institutional investors. Liquidity could facilitate either cutting and running by large shareholders or, alternatively, increased monitoring. Using an exogenous shock to liquidity in China, we...

Employing the American Inventor’s Protection Act (AIPA) that mandates, all patent applications are to be published within 18 months after filing, as a quasi-natural experiment, we find that accelerated patent disclosure increases stock price crash risk. This effect is stronger when treated...

The effect of corporate governance may depend on a firm's financial slack. On one hand, financial slack may be spent by managers for their private benefits; a high level is likely associated with severe agency conflicts. Thus corporate governance matters more for high financial slack firms...

We investigate the effect of shareholder litigation risk on corporate culture. We measure corporate culture by a novel machine learning metric following Li et al. (2021). Exploiting exogenous declines in shareholder litigation rights and derivative lawsuit risk following the staggered adoption...

We investigate the effect of fiduciary duty of loyalty on corporate culture measured by a novel machine learning approach. We apply a difference-in-differences method exploiting the staggered adoption of the Corporate Opportunity Waiver (COW) law in the U.S. states as an exogenous decline in the...

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...

Corporate limited liability can create agency conflicts between the public and private sectors. The resulting distortion may induce overinvestment in risky technologies relative to the social optimum. This paper examines the role of a well-designed corporate tax structure in aligning private...

Recent surveys show that 24% of independent directors in Russel 3,000 firms have continuously served on their boards for fifteen years or more. Based on a sample of S&P 1500 firms over the period 1998-2012, we document strong positive effects on financial performance for firms with one, very...

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...