Using two newly available datasets of listed firms covering the period from 1994 to 2003, we test if share-issue privatization, defined here as the change of corporate control from the State to private owners rather than the IPO event as in earlier studies, improved firm performance in China. To...

Using quarterly data for 1995-2005, we examine the role of financial factors in China's recent increases in real sector activity. A series of cointegrated VAR models indicate that banking sector development was central to these successes, but that stock market development, as measured by market...

We analyze the role of institutional cross-ownership in internalizing corporate governance externalities using granular mutual fund proxy voting data. Exploiting within-proposal and within-institution variation, we show that an institution's holdings in peer firms are positively associated with...

Regulators and governance activists are pressuring firms to abolish CEO duality (the Chief Executive Officer is also the Chairman of the Board). However, the literature provides mixed evidence on the relation between CEO duality and firm performance. Using the exogenous shock of the 1989...

Analyzing hand-collected data on the corporate subsidiary locations of all publicly listed firms in China, we find that “hometown firms,” firms headquartered in the hometown of the key political leaders of the province, set up more subsidiaries in their home provinces. This effect is...

Using a unique dataset of board proposal voting by individual independent directors of public companies in China from 2004 to 2009, we analyze the effects of career concerns and current reputation stock on independent directors' propensity to confront management. Younger directors and directors...

In this paper we investigate whether inefficient bank loans can reduce the value of borrowing firms when expropriation of the stock of minority shareholders by controlling shareholders is a major concern. Using data from Chinese banks, we find that bank loan announcements generate significantly...

Motivated by some real world phenomena, we extend the standard model of decision making with a possibly biased decision maker under career concerns by adding: 1) a consultation stage in which the advice from an advisor is available; 2) the possibility that the decision maker can control the...