This study empirically explores whether, and how, selected attributes of China's two-tier board system affect Chinese firms' performance and earnings informativeness. Using a data base of 4623 firm-year observations over the 1999 to 2003 period, we find some effects that mirror ones reported in...

Emerging economies are typically characterized by weak shareholders' protection and highly concentrated ownership structures which are relatively stable over time. With concentrated ownership, the conflict of interests shifts from the principal-agent problem to a dominant shareholders-minority...

Existing research on cross-country differences in ownership concentration analyzes country averages of ownership concentration instead of firm-level data. This creates omitted-variable and aggregation biases. Most papers also use small samples of large firms. This makes inferences to country...

This paper analyses the largest buyouts done by private equity investors in Spain. The objective of the paper is to analyse in depth these deals, to be able to better understand their leverage levels, valuations and the evolution of both variables. It also reviews who is behind these deals, from...

In this paper we investigate the ownership and control of British firms using recent techniques from computational graph theory. Specifically, we analyze the 'small-world' of ownership and control. A small-world is a network whose actors are linked by a short chain of acquaintances (short...

We study the determinants of a firm's decision to issue one of the four available ADR programs (Level I, Level II, Level III, and Rule 144A). We find that the firm's attributes (size, income, asset growth, leverage, privatization, ownership structure, and country-of-origin) and the firm's...

As domestic sources of outside finance are limited in many countries around the world, it is important to understand factors that influence whether foreign investors provide capital to a country's firms. We study 4,409 firms from 29 countries to assess whether and why concerns about corporate...

This study evaluates the effects of concentrated management (board director) ownership on changes of firm performance (value and ROA) following the Asian Financial Crisis (1997-98), a shock period when corporate governance structures are of greater concern and strongly tested. Our results show...

For many countries, the most significant barriers to trade in financial assets have been knocked down. Yet, the financial world is not flat because poor governance prevents firms from being widely held and from taking full advantage of financial globalization. Poor governance has implications...

Agency problems are an important determinant of corporate liquidity. For a sample of more than 11,000 firms from 45 countries, we find that corporations in countries where shareholders rights are not well protected hold up to twice as much cash as corporations in countries with good shareholder...