In this study, we examine the effect of worldwide board reforms on the cost of debt financing. We find an overall increase in loan spreads in countries that initiate board reforms versus those without the reforms, which suggests that board reforms strengthen the power of shareholders at the cost...

This study identifies information accessibility as a determinant of corporate innovation. Using the sudden termination of Google's search services in China, we find a persistently large negative effect on the intensity and quality of innovation among firms relying on foreign technology. The...

This paper identifies product market competition as a fundamental impetus for privatization. Based on the economy with the largest state sector and shocks to product market competition caused by its trade liberalization, we explore whether and how competition affects privatization. We find that...

This paper documents a causal effect of trade-induced competition on the ownership dynamics of firms using the largest trade liberalization in China. By exploiting varying degrees of tariff reductions across industries, we find that firms that are more affected by competitive shock experience a...

This paper documents that changes in litigation risk affect corporate voluntary disclosure practices. We make causal inferences by exploiting three legal events that generate exogenous variations in firms' litigation risk. Using a matching-based, fixed-effect difference-indifferences design, we...

This paper examines how operational uncertainty affects managerial incentives in information production using the staggered recognition of Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine (IDD) by state courts as a quasi-natural experiment. The adoption of IDD improves the protection of trade secrets by...

Research suggests that restricted labor mobility discourages managers from investing in human capital and reduces firm value. However, whether firms re-incentivize managers to mitigate its adverse effects remains unexplored. We find that after the adoption of the inevitable disclosure doctrine...

In this study, we investigate the effect of corporate governance reforms on corporate innovation by constructing a comprehensive firm-level panel dataset across 58 countries from 2000 to 2015. We find that both the quantity and quality of innovation decrease after the initiation of the reforms....

While practitioners call for long-term managerial compensation to promote firms’ commitment in environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, little direct evidence exists on the role managerial incentive horizon plays in firms’ ESG performance. Exploiting two alternative identification...