This study examines whether the state legal environment influences where IPOs elect to incorporate and their subsequent market value. To examine these questions, we develop a new measure of the state legal environment that incorporates both the presence of critical statutes and the willingness...

Legal rights of investors have been recognized as an essential component of corporate governance. We assess the efficacy of these rights by an examination of the corporate governance effects of 215 shareholder derivative lawsuits filed in U.S. courts over the period, 1982-1994. We find...

This Article examines the quality of forecasts in bankruptcy disclosure statements. Required by the Bankruptcy Code, disclosure statements seek to provide creditors with adequate information to cast an informed vote on a chapter 11 plan of reorganization. In addition, disclosure statements are...

This paper makes the first attempt at a comprehensive and general assessment of chapter 11 costs. The findings are based on a random sample of 118 case files from six federal judicial districts. The data was collected by hand through reading of individual files. We find that chapter 11 costs...

Legal rules penalize managers more heavily for making direct statements than they do for engaging in financial signaling activity. Therefore, over time, managers will engage in more signaling activity than they would in the absence of legal regulation. It is unlikely that the law provides any...

Through a comparison of serially and once bankrupt firms, we examine those factors that lead to a successful reorganization. We find that serially bankrupt firms generally fail to restructure their top management around the time of their initial reorganization while over 70% of our sample of...

Using an empirical analysis from Chapter 7 cases in five judicial districts, this article estimates the direct costs in typical small business Chapter 7s. The article finds that direct costs are lower than commonly portrayed, constituting a mean of 6.1% of total assets of 13.5% of total...