This paper examines the propensity of firms to comove in investment decisions. Although stock return comovement and herding among investors received considerable attention in existing work, little is known about correlated investment behavior of firms. After controlling for the similarity of...

A much-needed critical investigation of the root causes of the European sovereign debt crisis, featuring contributions from Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and the Argentine chief negotiator with the IMF, Roberto Lavagna

This paper examines the interaction between product market competition and international differences in shareholder rights in relation to firm performance and corporate policies. In contrast to existing literature, we provide evidence of complementarities between product market competition and...

This paper examines access to external financing in the privatization context and provides new evidence on the effects of financing constraints on performance and investment. Ownership reforms increase firms' reliance on external financing. Empirically, performance and investment changes around...

Empirical evidence on the relations between board independence and board decisions and firm performance is generally confounded by serious endogeneity issues. We circumvent these endogeneity problems by demonstrating the strong impact of the local director labor market on board composition....