We investigate the functioning of internal capital markets in Indian Business Groups. We document that intra-group loans are an important means of transferring cash across group firms and that such transfers are typically used to support the financially weaker firms. Groups significantly...

We argue that powerful CEOs induce their boards to shift the weight on performance measures towards the better performing measures, thereby rigging the incentive part of their pay. The intuition is developed in a simple model in which some powerful CEOs exploit superior information and lack of...

We hypothesize that established firms with innovative projects and technologies will make relatively greater use of arm's length financing (such as public debt and equity); whereas less innovative firms will tend to use relationship based borrowing (such as bank borrowing). The hypothesis is...

Wan (2013) argues that the statistical inferences in our Journal of Finance (2011) paper are not robust, as we do not prove that it is powerful CEOs that rig incentive contracts. Wan makes the theoretical claim that the rigging results are consistent with ex-post optimal re-contracting. However,...

We investigate the importance of reputation-based implicit contracts in firm financing in the context of Indian Business Groups. The group structure enables us to cleanly analyze the negative spillovers on other firms, triggered by a member firm defaulting on its debt obligations. We hypothesize...