There are two main sources of confusion in the public corporate governance debate. One is the confusion about the role of public policy intervention. The other is a lack of empirical knowledge about the corporate landscape where rules are supposed to be implemented and the functioning of...

This paper demonstrates that the current literature on cross-ownership among firms underestimates the true degree of separation between cash flow rights and voting rights. We use accounting identities to define coefficients of control, such that any (direct or indirect) control of a firm may be...

In family firms, the succession of controlling equity stake to next generation is an issue of paramount importance. This, however, can be a major challenge in the presence of heavy inheritance or gift tax burden (high tax rate and absence of tax-saving vehicles, such as trusts or foundations)...

This paper provides a framework for analysing the character and degree of ownership engagement by institutional investors. It argues that the general term “institutional investor” in itself doesn’t say very much about the quality or degree of ownership engagement. It is therefore an...

This paper presents a simple model for dual-class stock shares, in which common shareholders receive both public and private cash flows (i.e. dividends and any private benefit of holding voting rights) and preferred shareholders only receive public cash flows (i.e. dividends). The dual-class...

This paper investigates whether investment spending of firms is sensitive to the availability of internal funds. Imperfect capital markets create a hierarchy for the different sources of funds such that investment and financial decisions are not independent. The relation between corporate...

This paper examines the channel relationship of liquidity, corporate governance, and firm valuation for Russian firms over the period of 2005 to 2007. We test the hypotheses that liquidity improves corporate governance, and better corporate governance enhances firm value. We form the system of...

We review the governance role of private equity (PE) firms in companies that have experienced an LBO. We conjecture that PE firms may provide powerful remedies to agency conflicts associated with public and private firms, such as managerial entrenchment and opportunism

The conflict of interests between controlling and minority shareholders is an important issue in firms with concentrated ownership. We document that the controlling shareholders' expropriation behavior through tunneling or self-dealing is much severer in politically connected firms. The results...

I study the board structure of a sample of dual-class firms from 1996 to 2002, and relate it to the degree of control-cash flow rights divergence. Compared to a group of matched single-class firms with similar contracting environment when ownership structure was made, dual-class firms have...