Recent studies have documented systematic exchanges of favors between politicians and firms, and that connected firms, on average gain from political ties. Since these ties are often to a top manager or large shareholder, agency problems are likely more severe for politically connected firms....

We hypothesize that firms structure their asset holdings so as to shelter assets from extraction by politicians and bureaucrats. Specifically, in countries where the threat of political extraction is higher, we hypothesize that firms will hold a lower fraction of their assets in liquid form....

I investigate the sources of value gains in public-to-private transactions by examining the wealth effects on industry rivals of target firms. For a sample of 279 public-to-private bids in the U.S. from 1980 to 2007, I find that agency hypothesis explains more of the cross-sectional variation in...

A widely accepted feature of financial markets across the world is that there are limits to access credit. While this problem is extremely acute at times of economic crisis and recession, it is also prevalent at times of robust economic growth. When investment opportunities in an economy are...

My dissertation focuses on the incentives from executive stock and stock option ownership, how these incentives affect the welfare of firms different stakeholders, and how these stakeholders respond. In the first chapter, I investigate whether CEO stock and stock option ownership affects firms...