Judging from prior writings, many researchers and practitioners think shareholder-initiated corporate governance proposals promote value-maximizing policies. These proposals are regarded as serving an important role in the governance of public corporations. Our findings, however, do not support...

This study documents and examines a decrease in the price discounts associated with private investments in public equity (PIPE) issues. PIPE discounts decreased from an average of 16.4 percent during the 1995 to 2000 period to an average of 9.8 percent during the 2001 to 2007 period. This...

This study examines the effects of different corporate cultures on the efficacy of board independence as a corporate governance mechanism. We distinguish between two cultural types, manipulative versus non-manipulative firms, and focus on CEO dismissal events. In our empirical analysis, firms...

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) manage investment portfolios on behalf of governments that own the portfolios. We analyze the impact of SWF investments on the values of the companies in which they invest and provide evidence consistent with the tradeoff between the monitoring and lobbying benefits...

We present empirical evidence on the relative profitability, leverage, and labor intensity of government-owned and privately-owned firms. Cross-sectional analysis of a sample of very large firms indicates that those owned by governments are significantly less profitable than those held...

Proponents of state antitakeover legislation argue that previous empirical tests by financial economists of the wealth effects of Pennsylvania's 1990 antitakeover law are biased. We show that the proponents are correct. In particular, firm size, event-time clustering, and non- synchronous...