Dynastic-controlled firms are led by founding family CEOs while the family owns an insignificant share of equity (defined as less than five percent). They represent 7.4% of listed firms in post-war Japan, include well-known firms such as Casio, Suzuki and Toyota, and are often grouped with...

Mergers in Japan have the dubious distinction of not creating wealth for shareholders of target firms, in sharp contrast to much of the rest of the world. Using a sample of 91 mergers from 1982 through 2003 we document several distinctive features of the merger market in Japan: mergers tend to...

After over a decade of sluggish economic growth accompanied by massive fiscal stimulus and government handouts (not unlike the response to the current global crisis) in the 1990s, it remains an open question whether and how Japanese firms have restructured their operations, and whether these...

We study changes in U.S. institutional ownership and its effects for 83 new listings of Canadian equities on U.S. exchanges. While institutional holdings increase starting four quarters before cross-listing, there is a pronounced spike in the listing quarter. This is consistent with foreign...

After over a decade of sluggish economic growth accompanied by massive fiscal stimulus and government handouts (not unlike the response to the current global crisis) in the 1990s, it remains an open question whether and how Japanese firms have restructured their operations, and whether these...

The two main theories of capital structure-the tradeoff theory and the pecking order theory-have opposite predictions about the expected relationship between corporate leverage and profitability. According to the tradeoff theory, companies that earn higher profits will use more debt both to...

Dual-class share unifications have typically been argued to be beneficial for voting shareholders, who are usually compensated for the loss of their superior voting privileges. However, no covenants exist that make this compensation mandatory for voting shareholders. In this paper, we examine a...

We examine differences in financial leverage between parent and spun-off firms that emerge from corporate spin-offs. Our tests control for past financing choices and the costs of adjusting capital structure, factors that can obscure cross-sectional patterns among firms' target leverage ratios....