We study the effect of environmental, social and governance (ESG) scores on the portfolio allocations of institutional investors. Using a unique data set, we find that institutional investor holdings (as measured by 13F filings) are strongly driven by the ESG quality of companies. While...

Recent years have seen a significant increase in complexity of multinational enterprises (MNEs) ownership structures. Complex corporate structures raise concerns on the effectiveness of national and international investment policies, based on the notion of investors' nationality. This motivates...

This paper investigates to what extent risk management and corporate governance mitigate the involvement of banks in credit boom and bust cycles. Using a unique, hand-collected dataset on 156 banks from Central and Eastern Europe during 2005-2012, we assess whether banks with stronger risk...

This paper provides evidence on the incidence, characteristics, and performance of activist engagements across countries. We find that the incidence of activism is greatest with high institutional ownership, particularly for U.S. institutions. We use a sample of 1,740 activist engagements across...

This paper analyzes the relationship between ownership structure (shareholders' stake and identity) and corporate risk taking for a sample of companies from 21 OECD countries for the period 2000-2008. Our main contribution is considering simultaneously the effect of growth opportunities and the...

We derive and develop a simple and intuitive model that shines fresh light on the relentless debate over whether corporate ownership converges to the Berle-Means modern corporation with high stock ownership dispersion. Our model takes into account the importance of both protective legal...

I study the relation between internal governance and creditor governance. A deterioration in creditor governance may increase the agency costs of debt and managerial opportunism at the expense of shareholders. I exploit the introduction of credit default swaps (CDS) as a negative shock to...

This paper investigates whether foreign institutional investors affect the global convergence of financial reporting practices. Using several measures of reporting convergence, we show that U.S. institutional ownership is positively associated with subsequent changes in emerging market firms'...

Public firms are becoming increasingly interconnected through institutional investors' stock ownership, specifically through cross-ownership, in which an institutional investor has a significant stake in multiple firms in the same industry. When a firm seeks external financing for its investment...