We empirically analyze the rationale for adopting anti-takeover provisions (ATPs) by examining how ATPs affect corporate spin-offs. We find that firms protected by more ATPs before spin-offs have higher abnormal announcement returns and greater improvement in post-spin-off operating performance...

Using a sample of U.S. firms from 1995 to 2002, we examine corporate payout policy in dual-class firms. The expropriation hypothesis predicts that dual-class firms pay out less to shareholders because entrenched managers want to maximize the value of assets under control and the private benefits...

To what extent conflicts of interest affect the investment value of sell-side analyst research is an ongoing debate. We approach this issue from a new direction by investigating how asset-management divisions of investment banks use stock recommendations issued by their own analysts. Based on...

We examine how organizational structure affects corporate payout policies. Conglomerates (multi-segment firms) pay out more than pure plays (single-segment firms) in both cash dividends and total payouts (defined as cash dividends plus share repurchases). Further, corporate payouts increase as...

We find that the 52-week high effect (George and Hwang, 2004) cannot be explained by risk factors. Instead, it is more consistent with investor underreaction caused by anchoring bias: the presumably more sophisticated institutional investors suffer less from this bias and buy (sell) stocks close...

While the costs associated with dual-class shares and other antitakeover provisions are widely documented, the benefits are rarely studied in the literature. We test the hypothesis that dual-class shares, like other antitakeover provisions, can help managers focus on the implementation of...

We find that actively managed mutual funds have higher ownership in pure-play firms than in conglomerates. The results show that fund managers’ industry expertise explains this preference because investing in pureplays allows the industry expertise to concentrate in one industry and investing...

Fundamental innovation usually involves huge upfront costs, but the benefits are spread across various sectors of the economy. Given the large costs and limited appropriability of the benefits associated with fundamental innovations, individual firms underinvest in these innovations relative to...

We develop a theoretical analysis of the choice of firms between fixed-price offerings and uniform-price auctions for selling shares in IPOs and privatizations. We consider a setting in which a firm goes public by selling a fraction of its equity in an IPO market where insiders have private...

We analyze the roles of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists (VC), and the government in financing fundamental innovations, defined as those with positive social value net of development costs, but negative net present values to innovating firms. We first analyze the case where the entrepreneur,...