We allow the preference of a political majority to determine boththe corporate governance structure and the division of profits betweenhuman and financial capital. In a democratic society where financialwealth is concentrated, a political majority may prefer to restraingovernance by dispersed...

We study the bond price reaction of a merged firms peers, in order to better understand how the market responds to a restructuring. We argue that a merger announcement may signal the possibility of a merger wave to the industry, and in doing so, increase the conditional probability that peer...

In this paper we challenge the view that corporate bonds are always arm's length debt. We analyze the effect of bond ratings on the stock price return to acquirers in M&A transactions, which tend to have significant effects on creditor wealth. We find acquirers abnormal returns to be higher if...

Private equity owned firms have more leverage, more intense compensation contracts, and higher productivity than comparable firms. We develop a theory of buyouts in oligopolistic markets that explains these facts. Private equity firms are more aggressive in inducing restructuring compared to...

Business groups in emerging markets perform better than unaffiliated firms. One explanation is that business groups substitute some functions of missing institutions, for example, enforcing contracts. We investigate this by setting up a model where firms within the business group are connected...

Equity ties between businesses change the division of the firms' joint profits, thereby affecting incentives for relation-specific investments and other strategic actions. Depending on which side owns the equity and how readily the equity can be resold, we find that the changed incentives can...