This paper provides empirical evidence on the relationship between cross-border acquisitions and innovation activities at the firm level. In contrast to previous studies that analyze the effects on innovation in target firms, this paper investigates the effects on the investing firms. For the...

This paper studies how hedge fund activism impacts corporate innovation. Firms targeted by activists improve their innovation efficiency over the five-year period following hedge fund intervention. Despite a tightening in R&D expenditures, target firms increase innovation output, as measured by...

We study the effect of antitakeover provisions (ATPs) on innovation. To establish causality, we use a regression discontinuity approach that relies on locally exogenous variation generated by shareholder proposal votes. We find a positive, causal effect of ATPs on innovation. This positive...

This paper analyzes loan pricing when there is multiple banking and borrower distress. Using a unique data set on SME lending collected from major German banks, we can instrument for effective coordination between lenders, carrying out a panel estimation. The analysis allows to distinguish...

This paper describes the trends in foreign bank ownership across the world and presents, for the first time, empirical evidence of the causes of multinational banks' exits from other countries. Using panel data for 149 closed or divested foreign bank subsidiaries across 54 countries from 1997 to...

In this paper, we analyse whether bank owners or bank managers were the driving force behind the risks incurred in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007/2008. We show that owner controlled banks had higher profits in the years before the crisis, and incurred larger losses and were more likely...

Little is known about how socioeconomic characteristics of executive teams affect corporate governance in banking. Exploiting a unique dataset, we show how age, gender, and education composition of executive teams affect risk taking of financial institutions. First, we establish that age,...

This paper argues that special purpose vehicles, SPVs, are two-edged financial constructs whose bad edge consists in conveying opaque governance, whereas its good one amounts to interesting financial engineering. Firstly, the notion of opaque governance is highlighted, to focus next on SPVs and...

In the recent theoretical literature on lending risk, the coordination problem in multi-creditor relationships have been analyzed extensively. We address this topic empirically, relying on a unique panel data set that includes detailed credit-file information on distressed lending relationships...

Bank intermediated finance has been cited frequently as the preferred means for channeling funds from savers to firms. Germany is the prototypical economy where universal banks allegedly exert substantial influence over firms. Despite frequent assertions about the considerable power of German...