The empirically-observed cross-sectional relationship between the level of insider share ownership and the level of firm value has often been interpreted to mean that a change in share ownership can lead to a change in firm value. Such an interpretation has been criticized for ignoring potential...

During the 1990s, the global economy appears to have suffered an outbreak of quot;outside director maniaquot; - at least 18 countries have witnessed publication of guidelines that stipulate floors for the representation of outside directors on corporate boards. The apparent (largely untested)...

We survey two generations of research on corporate governance systems around the world, concentrating on countries other than the United States. The first generation of international corporate governance research is patterned after the US reasearch that precedes it. These studies examine...

This study analyzes corporate expenditures for property, plant and equipment (PPamp;E) and research and development (Ramp;D) for over 2,500 firms from 1987 to 1994. We document a positive relation between expenditures for PPamp;E and Ramp;D and institutional share ownership. This relation is...

Prior studies argue that investment by undervalued firms that require external equity is particularly sensitive to stock prices in irrational capital markets. We present a model in which investment can appear to be more sensitive to stock prices when capital markets are rational, but subject to...

quot;Streetlorequot; has touted the market return in January as a predictor of market returns for the remainder of the year since at least 1973. We systematically examine the predictive power of January returns over the period 1940-2003 and find that January returns have predictive power for...

Prior studies of stocks added to the Samp;P 500 Index report that Index inclusion is associated with a permanent increase in stock price. This result has been interpreted to mean that demand curves for stocks slope downward. A key premise underlying this interpretation is that Index inclusion...

We analyze the likelihood of government bailouts of a sample of 450 politically-connected (but publicly-traded) firms from 35 countries over the period 1997 through 2002. We find that politically-connected firms are significantly more likely to be bailed out than similar non-connected firms....

The market for Auction Rate Securities (ARS) made headlines during the second week of February 2008 when auctions, at which the bonds interest rates are reset, experienced a wave of ldquo;failures.rdquo; Contrary to headlines that attribute the failures to a ldquo;frozenrdquo; market and/or to...

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....