The subprime crisis led to a wave of government interventions in the private sector that has been particularly strong in Europe and Latin America, where several governments are large shareholders in a variety of public firms. In a sense, the subprime crisis induced these governments to behave as...

Complex investments are investments that are difficult to value in the short-term. In this paper, we analyze the incentives of a manager who is compensated based on short-term stock prices to invest in complex long-term investments. In particular, we explore how the manager's investment decision...

Abstract: The key issue concerning shareholder transparency rules, and the related rules on acting in concert (Europe), or the voting group concept (U.S.) is enforcement. Rather than thinking about appropriate enforcement measures, jurisdictions such as the UK and Switzerland decided in favor of...

This paper explores the relationship between founding family ownership and stock market returns. Using the entire population of non-financial firms listed on the Swiss stock market for 2003–2013, we find that the stock returns of family firms are significantly higher than those of non-family...

We examine how institutional ownership structure gives rise to limits to arbitrage through its impact on short-sale constraints. Stocks with lower, more concentrated, short-term, and less passive ownership exhibit lower lending supply, higher costs of shorting, and higher arbitrage risk. These...

We examine the influence of common ownership on commonalities in the information environment. Specifically, we study commonalities in financial statements and in the actions of key agents such as financial analysts and firm managers who contribute and respond to the information environment....

We analyze a model with information asymmetry where owning stock confers direct utility, in addition to impacting wealth. In contrast to settings based on wealth considerations alone, expected stock prices deviate from expected fundamentals even when assets are in zero net supply. Stocks that...

We hypothesize that a source of commonality in a stock's liquidity arises from correlated liquidity demand of the stock's investors. Focusing on correlated trading of mutual funds, we find that stocks with high mutual fund ownership have comovements in liquidity about twice as large as those for...

Firms are more likely to pay dividends with higher payout ratios in an imputation environment. The effects of profitability and earned/contributed capital mix on the decision to pay dividends and dividend payout are weaker for firms following imputation tax system than traditional tax system....