This dissertation addresses issues in corporate finance. Part I examines the litigationenvironment of a firm and its impact on financial policy. Chapter 1 discusses prior research,including theory and empirical results, related to firm performance, financial policy, andlitigation. It provides...

Observing whether diversification adds or destroys value is notoriously difficult, leaving open the question of the degree to which any diversification discount can be affected by management quality and oversight. This study uses the unique setting of real estate investment trusts (REITs), which...

While Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) have experienced very high growth rates over the past 15 years, the growth in mutual funds that invest in REITs has been even more dramatic. REIT mutual fund returns are typically presented relative to the return on a simple value-weighted REIT index....

U.S. corporations hold significant amounts of cash on their balance sheets, and these cash holdings have been justified in the existing empirical literature by transaction costs and precautionary motives. An additional explanation, considered in this study, is that U.S. multinational firms hold...

This study investigates the relation between firms' investment choices and various governance mechanisms, using a sample of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). Since REITs provide a relatively accurate measure of Tobin's q, a transparent structure, and generally less asymmetric information...

U.S. corporations hold significant amounts of cash on their balance sheets, and these cash holdings have been justified in the existing empirical literature by transaction costs and precautionary motives. An additional explanation, considered in this study, is that U.S. multinational firms hold...