How does the market for corporate control reallocate firm ownership in response to adverse aggregate financial shocks? To answer this question, we develop a tractable model of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) where firms facing different degrees of financial constraints acquire ownership of...

Imagine if we stopped deciding basketball games by baskets alone. Instead, victory would be determined by a combination of baskets, rebounds, steals, and fouls. Each of these is universally acknowledged as a critical component of the game. Why not reward them directly instead of indirectly, by...

The foreign direct investment (FDI) literature documents that higher quality governance, at both the national level and the firm level, is associated with a greater likelihood to invest abroad and to take larger stakes when investing abroad. We examine a unique set of international real estate...

This paper investigates whether foreign institutional investors in emerging markets can enhance shareholder value. We pay special attention to two dimensions of investor heterogeneity: whether an investor declares itself as an activist, and whether an investor comes from a country with a strong...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the propensity of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) for shareholder activism and their potential impact on corporate governance.Design/methodology/approach – The study highlights the relationships between SWFs and corporate governance and also...

Corporate law in advanced domestic legal systems on the one hand, and typical treaties for the protection of foreign investment on the other hand, treat claims for damages by company shareholders differently. Advanced domestic systems generally bar shareholders from claiming for reflective loss...

While Merton (1987) proposes that firm value increases with the number of shareholders, relatively few studies have explicitly sought to identify the factors that affect investor participation per se in equity markets. Using a unique dataset that measures the inflow and outflow of equity...

This study introduces a new asset pricing factor to capture both the effects of concentrated ownership and institutional development of in 61 international equity markets. The evidence suggests the new measure offers significant improvements over the size and book-to-market value three factor...

This paper investigates the effect of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) on the relation between institutional ownership (IO) and firm innovation. We find that US firms investing in innovation attract more institutional capital post-SOX. Prior literature identifies two SOX effects on the average US...

We provide a comprehensive overview of the role of institutional investors in corporate governance with three main components. First, we provide a detailed characterization of key aspects of the legal and regulatory setting within which institutional investors govern portfolio firms. Second, we...