We analyze the ultimate ownership and control of 5,232 corporations in 13 Western European countries. Firms are typically widely held (36.93 percent) or family controlled (44.29 percent). Widely-held firms are more important in the U.K. and Ireland, family-controlled firms in continental Europe....

Whereas most US corporations are widely-held, the predominant form of ownership in East Asia is control by a family, which often supplies a top manager. These features of quot;crony capitalismquot; are actually more pronounced in Western Europe. In both regions, the salient agency problem is...

Firm specific information has a damped effect on business group firms' stock prices. Business group affiliated firms' idiosyncratic stock returns are less responsive to idiosyncratic commodity price shocks than are the idiosyncratic returns of otherwise similar unaffiliated firms in the same...

We study merger and acquisition (Mamp;A) payment choices of European bidders for publicly and privately held targets in the 1997-2000 period. Europe is an ideal venue for studying the importance of corporate governance in making Mamp;A payment choices, given the large number of closely held...

Using newly-assembled data encompassing up to 75 countries and starting circa 1910, we find that the Schumpeterian process of creative destruction aptly describes the replacement of large firms by other firms, but exceptions to the norm of replacement are not rare and replacement is often not by...

In lower-income economies, stocks exhibit less idiosyncratic volatility and business groups are more prevalent. This study connects these two findings by showing that business group affiliated firms' stock returns exhibit less idiosyncratic volatility than do the returns of otherwise similar...

We use a multitude of tax reforms across OECD countries as natural experiments to estimate the market value of the tax benefits of debt financing. We report time-series evidence that tax reforms are followed by large changes in the value of corporate equity. However, the impact of tax reforms is...

We investigate the employment consequences of private equity buyouts. We find that, on average, buyouts by politically connected private equity firms are associated with higher job creation at the establishments operated by their target firms than buyouts by non-connected private equity firms....

We extend the literature on how managerial traits relate to corporate choices by documenting that firms run by female CEOs have lower leverage, less volatile earnings, and a higher chance of survival than otherwise similar firms run by male CEOs. Additionally, transitions from male to female...

Using a newly assembled 50 country firm-level database spanning 19 years, we document a “bright side” for employees of business group affiliated firms: less pronounced fluctuations in employment than unaffiliated firms in response to macroeconomic shocks. The results are robust to a variety...