We focus on firms that chronically underperform and evaluate ways that institutional investors can facilitate the redeployment of assets to higher valued uses. Our evidence indicates that institutional holdings affect firm survival. Increases in institutional holdings are associated with...

This paper studies how CEO pay and its composition is shaped by strategic factors related to the firm's capacity to generate rents and value, the uncertainty of its resource advantage, and the competitive interaction between firm stakeholders and top management. This is done using an analytical...

We extend prior empirical research on the questions of whether, how much, and under which conditions strategic leaders matter to the fate of their firms. With a 20-year Panel of 110 German firms, our analysis broadens the prevalent focus on CEO influences in U.S. settings. The results indicate...

What role does political influence play in access to finance? Using a comprehensive cross-country dataset, I characterize how and why domestic political connections affect firms' ability to access all types of finance — exploiting firms' cross-listing activity as a source of empirical...

This Article examines private-equity firms as an example of “uncorporate” structures in the governance of large firms. Other examples include master limited partnerships, real estate investment trusts, hedge funds, and venture capital funds. These firms can be seen as an alternative to the...

We exploit an influential 1991 Delaware court ruling to examine simultaneously two types of conservatism that play important roles in resolving creditor-owner agency conflicts: contracting conservatism and reporting conservatism. The ruling expanded managerial fiduciary duties in favor of...

We demonstrate variation in the extent to which firms benefit from their affiliation with Chilean business groups in the 1988-1996 period. The net benefits of unrelated diversification are positive if group diversification exceeds a threshold level, though this threshold increases with time. We...

Over the years since airline deregulation five of the remaining U.S. legacy carriers lost money on mergers that cost them a total of $29.6 billion. The combined market cap of these carriers at the end of 2007 was $15.5 billion. In other words, their return on merger investments was -48%. Why?...

The Hollywood quot;studio systemquot; - with production, distribution, and exhibition vertically integrated - flourished from the late teens until 1948, when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its famous Paramount decision. The Paramount consent decrees required the divestiture of affiliated theater...

Equity-based compensation, while inducing greater managerial effort, also provides incentives for managers to fraudulently inflate a firm's stock price. This paper examines the owners' optimal contract in the face of these conflicting incentives when it is sometimes possible for the manager to...