This paper analyzes whether the political connections of listed firms in the United States affect the cost and terms of loan contracts. Using a hand-collected data set of the political connections of S&P 500 companies over the 2003-2008 time period, we find that the cost of bank loans is...

This article identifies an important channel through which excess control rights affect firm value. Using a new, hand-collected data set on corporate ownership and control of 3,468 firms in 22 countries during the 1996–2008 period, we find that the cost of debt financing is significantly...

Using Chinese manufacturing firm data over the period of 1998-2007, we find that firms become less capital-intensive after exporting, compared to similar non-exporting firms. To rationalize this finding that contrasts with existing evidence for most countries, we develop a variant of the...

We study whether cross-country differences in regulations have affected international bank flows. We find strong evidence that banks have transferred funds to markets with fewer regulations. This form of regulatory arbitrage suggests there may be a destructive “race to the bottom” in global...

The 2007 Property Law in China checked the power of local governments to expropriate the assets of private firms and it gave creditors (primarily banks) more rights over the assets underlying their secured loans to private firms. We use the property law as a natural experiment for understanding...

This paper examines the relation between a borrowing firm's ownership structure and its choice of debt source using a novel, hand-collected data set on corporate ownership, control and debt structures for 9,831 firms in 20 countries from 2001 to 2010. We find that the divergence between control...

We examine the effect of a CEO's military service on merger and acquisition decisions and outcomes. We find that acquirers led by CEOs with military backgrounds earn significantly higher abnormal stock returns at deal announcement, and these deals exhibit higher short-run and long-run synergies....

Tax evasion is a wide-spread phenomenon across the globe and even an important factor of the ongoing sovereign debt crisis. We show that firms in countries with better credit information sharing systems and higher branch penetration evade taxes to a lesser degree. This effect is stronger for...

We investigate the factors influencing international bank flows from 26 source countries to 120 recipient countries over the past two decades and consider the implications of these flows. Controlling for other factors, we find that the bank flows are positively related to the quality of...

EdTech which includes online education, computer assisted learning (CAL), and remote instruction was expanding rapidly even before the current full-scale substitution for in-person learning at all levels of education around the world because of the coronavirus pandemic. Studies of CAL...