The rapid growth in index funds and significant consolidation in the asset-management industry over the past few decades has led to higher levels of common ownership and increased attention on the topic by academic researchers. A consensus has yet to emerge from the literature regarding the...

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...

We consider the allocation of corporate control in a company with two large and a continuum of small shareholders. Control is determined in a shareholders' meeting, where the large shareholders submit competing proposals in order to attract the vote of small shareholders. The presence of...

This paper studies the link between the agency costs of equity and the agency costs of debt. Using a unique sample of the ownership structure of single and dual class firms as well as hand-collected data on loan contracts, we find that the agency cost of debt – proxied by various loan...

I examine whether the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US is a learning organization (i.e., one that is capable of learning and adaptation to the dynamic nature of the securities markets – the subject of the SEC's regulatory oversight). Using the treatment of public corporate...

The corporate governance literature has shown that self-interested controlling owners tend to divert corporate resources for private benefits at the expense of other shareholders. Such behavior leads the controlling owners to prefer long maturity debt to short maturity debt, to avoid frequent...

We analyze the role of institutional cross-ownership in internalizing corporate governance externalities using granular mutual fund proxy voting data. Exploiting within-proposal and within-institution variation, we show that an institution's holdings in peer firms are positively associated with...

I investigate whether implementation of the mandatory bid rule – the rule that grants all shareholders the right to participate in a takeover transaction at equal terms – affects target announcement returns. I use a difference-in-differences approach and the staggered adoption of the rule...