The recent wave of demutualizations has led to the declining significance of the mutual organizational form in the U.S. life insurance industry. In this paper, we consider the different methods of conversion to explore if the motivations were similar across the firms that chose to fully...

We explore the role of placement agents in equity private placements. Reputable agents are more likely to place shares of firms that have performed better and that have had frequent prior relationships with the agent. Controlling for self-selection and endogeneity, firms using reputable agents...

This study examines the determinants of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its implications on firms' investment policy, organizational strategy and performance. First, we find that firms with better performance, higher R&D intensity, better financial health, and firms in new economy...

A widely held view among policymakers, corporate executives and the media is that short-termism among institutional investors is increasingly prevalent. However, some institutional investors are increasingly vocal about taking a long-term approach, and these investors care about environmental,...

We find a U-shaped relation between industry concentration and innovation. The relation is driven by neck-and-neck industries where firms operate with similar productivity. When industry concentration is low, innovation intensity decreases as concentration increases. However, when industry...

We examine the relation between banks' corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance in a context of the recent financial crisis. We find that banks, in general, appear to be rewarded for being socially responsible as financial performance is positively and significantly...

This study provides an empirical analysis of the impact of the Greek debt crisis on stock returns of U.S. commercial banks. We find that good (bad) news events pertaining to the Greek debt crisis, identified by large changes in the Greek CDS spread, produce insignificant positive (negative)...

We examine how industry competition affects firms' choice of short-term debt. We find that the percentage of short-term debt is positively related to industry concentration at low levels of concentration, and inversely related to industry concentration at higher levels of concentration. This...