Financial frictions may represent a severe obstacle for firms' innovative activity. This paper shows the existence and quantifies the effect of binding financial constraints on the innovation propensity of Italian companies. Once provided a rich baseline specification for innovation, I analyze...

This paper estimates the effects of Say-on-Pay (SoP); a policy that increases shareholder "voice" by providing shareholders with a regular vote on executive pay. We apply a regression discontinuity design to the votes on shareholder-sponsored SoP proposals. Adopting SoP leads to large increases...

We employ World Bank Enterprise Survey data collected in 2006–2010 for 21,852 firms from 31 Latin American and Caribbean countries to investigate determinants of the adoption of International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certification, the relation between ISO certification and firm...

We provide evidence on the link between busyness of CEOs and/or chairmen and the performance of family firms in India. We show that the level of CEO busyness has a negative effect on firm performance, measured by Tobin's q. That is, the frequency of the CEO attending board meetings is positively...

Direct relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm performance has been examined by many scholars, but this direct test seems to be spurious and imprecise. This is because many factors indirectly influence this relation. Therefore, this study considers sustainable...

This paper examines the roles of business group affiliations and whether the size and ownership structure of business groups influence the performance outcomes of diversification among family-controlled firms in Malaysia. It presents evidence that agency-driven and thus performance-diminishing...

Does bank market power affect firm performance? We answer this question by examining 25,236 syndicated loan facilities granted between 2000 and 2010 by 296 banks to 9,029 US non-financial firms. Even though recently poorly-performing firms obtain loans from banks with more market power, we find...

This study focuses on ex ante performance of domestic and foreign takeover targets in Germany, one of the most important FDI infl ow destinations worldwide. Using a new database from German offcial statistics, unconditional comparisons as well as binary response model estimations of takeover...

This study explores the relationship between firm performance and business cycles. These cycles are deviations from the trend of an economy-wide variable, in our case, GDP. Using a sample of Brazilian listed firms and accounting measures of performance, we find a generally positive...

The objective of this paper is to explore the notion of dynamic capabilities as a dominant source of sustainable performance, focusing on human resource capability. Building on qualitative data from six representative IT firms, the results indicate that firms more strongly committed to deploying...