Exit theory predicts a governance role of outside blockholders' exit threats; but this role could be ineffective if managers' potential private benefits exceed their loss in stock-price declines caused by outside blockholders' exit. We test this prediction using the Split-Share Structure Reform...

We investigate the interplay between the distribution of ownership, short sale constraints, and market efficiency from the perspective of US cross-listed stocks domiciled in Canada during the short sale ban of 2008. Using minute-by-minute data, we show that prices in the two markets remained...

We evaluate the impacts of tax policy on asset returns using the U.S. municipal bond market. In theory, tax-induced ownership segmentation limits risk-sharing, creating downward-sloping regions of the aggregate demand curve for the asset. In the data, cross-state variation in tax privilege...

The governments which undertake privatization of their state owned enterprises often maintain some ownership in the newly privatized firms. This paper examines the effect of the presence of the government as a minority shareholder on the protection of the minority shareholders in privatized...

Foreign IPO firms incur higher issuance costs than domestic firms due to greater information asymmetry and ex ante valuation uncertainty. Little is known about how to overcome such liability of foreignness. This study, based on foreign-listed Chinese firms, shows that pre-IPO financing...

We analyze the impact of firm-specific stock market liberalization events on the capital structure and debt maturity decisions of firms from emerging market economies. In particular, we focus on the potentially different responses of firms with different ownership structures and associated...

This paper demonstrates that the current literature on cross-ownership among firms underestimates the true degree of separation between cash flow rights and voting rights. We use accounting identities to define coefficients of control, such that any (direct or indirect) control of a firm may be...

This study examines changes in block ownership for a large sample of listed and non-listed German firms. The frequency of block trading is similar to other countries, and the vast majority of block trades leads to changes in ultimate ownership (control transfers). Such changes are more likely...

This study provides new stylized facts on the determinants of corporate failure and acquisition in Germany. It also offers important lessons for the design of empirical studies. We show that firms experiencing failure or acquisition are significantly different from surviving firms on a number of...

This study investigates the determinants of changes in corporate ownership and firm failure, taking into account different types of sellers and buyers of control blocks. For a large panel of German corporations we find that firms are more likely to fail or to be sold when performance is poor,...