We examine a large and unique panel containing survey and financial statement data on small and medium sized private enterprises (SMEs) in Germany from 1991 to 2011. From the survey data, we derive a financial constraints measure based on managers' self-perception. We find that our measure...

Measuring the extent to which a firm is financially constrained is critical in assessing capital structure. Extant measures of financial constraints focus on macro firm characteristics such as age and size – variables highly correlated with other firm attributes. We parse 10-K disclosures...

When focusing on business performance of a country, industry or an individual firm the performance of companies may be tracked using various measures. By simulating the behaviour of a simple firm, our model underlines that the choice of measurement unit determines what distortions we will face,...

This paper investigates the effect of superstar CEOs on their competitors. Exploiting shocks to CEO status due to prestigious media awards, we document a significant positive stock market performance of competitors of superstar CEOs subsequent to the award. The effect is more pronounced for...

This paper builds on Rosen (1981) and Hvide (2002) to provide a simple framework that elucidates the nature of incentives in the tournaments among top executives in both the external managerial labor market for the top executive positions in other companies and within the executives' own firm...

We model and empirically assess industry tournament incentives for CEOs. The measures we develop for the tournament prize derive from the compensation gap between the CEO at her firm and the highest-paid CEO among similar competing firms. The model predicts that firm performance and risk...

This paper sheds new light on the assessment of firm networks via multiple directorships in terms of corporate firm performance. Using a large sample of European listed firms in the period from 2003 to 2011 and system GMM we find a significant compensation effect on corporate firm performance...

We propose a simple idea that corporate debt maturity should serve as a good indicator of future firm performance volatility. We show in a simple two-period model that the riskiness of corporate investment is a decreasing function of corporate debt maturity. If “observable” corporate debt...

We create a firm-level ChatGPT investment score, based on conference calls, that measures managers' anticipated changes in capital expenditures. We validate the score with interpretable textual content and its strong correlation with CFO survey responses. The investment score predicts future...

This paper studies monetary and exchange rate policy in a world of global value chains. Using recent microdata from Japan and Russia, devaluations are shown to negatively affect exporters in terms of employment, domestic revenue and profitability relative to nonexporting firms. Given their...