Creditor protection,shareholder protection and investment efficiency: New evidence

Prior studies show significant effects of creditor rights and shareholder rights on corporate investment efficiency; however, they have not addressed how shareholder (creditor) rights influence the relationship between creditor (shareholder) rights and firm investment efficiency. With a research sample of 235,969 firm-years from 31,152 firms across 42 countries during the period 2002–2016, we find that the negative (positive) effect of creditor (shareholder) rights on corporate investment efficiency is stronger (weaker) in countries of strong shareholder (creditor) protection. In addition, our research findings show that both creditor rights and shareholder rights are less effective in investment efficiency during the global financial crisis. Firms in countries of strong shareholder (creditor) protection experience smaller (larger) decreases in the effectiveness of creditor (shareholder) rights.     

Creditor rights and the outcome model of dividends

Using a sample of 22,374 firms from 35 countries, we examine the role of creditor rights, shareholder rights, and corporate governance in determining corporate dividend policy. We find that, while all three variables play a significant role in determining both the likelihood and the dividend amount, the effect of country-level creditor rights dominate. In subsequent analysis, we show that the outcome model is most effective in countries with strong creditor rights. When creditor rights are weak, creditors demand, and firms consent to lower dividends. These findings show that creditors, and not shareholders, exert the greatest influence over corporate dividend policy.     

Creditor Rights,Country Governance,and Corporate Cash Holdings

This study examines the impact of creditor rights and country governance on cash holdings using a sample of firms from 47 countries. We hypothesize that cash holdings are smaller when both creditor rights and country governance are high. In these circumstances firms will not need to hold as much cash for future investments needs (precautionary funds) because firms will expect that funds will be available in the future. Our findings support our hypothesis and hold for alternative definitions for cash holdings, different country samples, different definitions of governance and concerns about endogeneity.     

A Property Rights Perspective on Venture Capital Investment Decisions

To understand how ownership differences influence specific types of strategic decisions, we examine the investment decisions of venture capital (VC) firms, for which a variety of property rights arrangements exist. We describe how VC firms are characterized by important differences in how and to whom various property rights are allocated. On this basis, we develop a series of hypotheses regarding differences in the range and types of investment opportunities pursued by private, corporate, and bank affiliated VC firms. Evaluating our hypotheses using data on investments carried out by 3557 firms, we find that these types of firm perform distinct roles in the ecology of VC financing.     

Corporate Governance,Investment, and Firm Valuation in Asian Emerging Markets

We investigate the effects of corporate governance and family ownership on firm valuation through investment efficiency in Asian emerging markets. Using 3 years of time series data from the Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia corporate governance score for 10 Asian emerging markets, we find that good corporate governance leads to better or more efficient investment decisions and eventually to higher firm value. We also find that investors reward firms for improvement in corporate governance. The findings do not hold for Asian firms with a family or concentrated ownership structure. The results are not driven by changes in accounting standards in these markets.     

Asymmetric information and inside management trading in the Chinese market

Insider trading incentives have been widely examined in stock markets, but mainly in developed countries. Given the fact that the volatility of stock exchange markets in emerging economies is typically even higher, there is a need for research to explore the extent to which information asymmetry plays a role in management trading incentives in emerging economies. To address this research need, this study examines management trading incentives in relation to investment efficiency in Chinese listed firms on the main board and on the small- to medium-enterprises (SME) board in the period 2006 to 2017. We find that executives buy shares when firms’ investments are more efficient. The frequency of management buying also increases with investment efficiency. However, managers do not sell their shares according to firms’ investment efficiency. Moreover, executives of firms listed on the main board trade more on the asymmetric information of investment efficiency than those on the SME board.     

财务报表重述与公司非效率投资行为

以在2006—2010年的年报附注中披露会计差错更正的上市公司为重述样本,运用倾向得分匹配等两种方法产生控制样本,实证检验财务报表重述公告前后公司投资效率的变化,为财务报告信息质量与公司投资效率间的因果联系提供了更为直接的证据。结果发现：（1）财务报表重述之前,存在融资约束的重述公司会投资不足,不存在融资约束的重述公司倾向于投资过度;（2）报表重述公告后,重述公司投资效率显著提高。     

Market Risk Disclosures and Investment Efficiency: International Evidence from the Gulf Cooperation Council Financial Firms

This study examines the association between market risk disclosures (MRDs) and the investment efficiency of financial firms from six emerging markets in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. Based on a sample of 553 firm‐year observations over the 2007–2011 period, we find that MRDs are significantly and negatively associated with both under‐investment and over‐investment and that this association is more pronounced for larger firms. We also find that the association between MRDs and under‐investment is moderated during periods of economic distress such as the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and that the association between MRDs and over‐investment is magnified during periods of reduced financial distress. Our results are consistent with the idea that MRDs reduce information asymmetry, which ultimately improves investment efficiency. We contribute to the literature in an emerging market context by providing empirical evidence on the association between MRDs and investment efficiency across six emerging GCC capital markets. This study also fills a gap in the literature by providing evidence on the factors affecting the investment efficiency of financial firms.     

Corporate voluntary greenhouse gas reporting: Stakeholder pressure and the mediating role of the chief executive officer

The study sheds light on the extent to which various stakeholder pressures influence voluntary disclosure of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and how the impact is explained and moderated chief executive officer (CEO) characteristics of 215 FTSE 350 listed U.K. companies for the year 2011. The study developed a classification of GHG emission disclosure based on the guidelines of GHG Protocol, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Global Framework for Climate Risk Disclosure using content analysis. Evidence from the study suggests that some stakeholder pressure (regulatory, creditor, supplier, customer, and board control) positively impacts on GHG disclosure information by firms. We found that stakeholder pressure in the form of regulatory, mimetic, and shareholders pressure positively influenced the disclosure of GHG information. We also found that creditor pressure also had a significant negative relationship with GHG disclosure. Although CEO age had a direct negative effect on GHG voluntary disclosure, its moderation effect on stakeholder pressure influence on GHG disclosure was only significant on regulatory pressure.     

Efficiency, productivity, and scale economies in the U.S. property-liability insurance industry

The paper examines efficiency, productivity and scale economies in the U.S. property-liability insurance industry. Productivity change is analyzed using Malmquist indices, and efficiency is estimated using data envelopment analysis. The results indicate that the majority of firms below median size in the industry are operating with increasing returns to scale, and the majority of firms above median size are operating with decreasing returns to scale. However, a significant number of firms in each size decile have achieved constant returns to scale. Over the sample period, the industry experienced significant gains in total factor productivity, and there is an upward trend in scale and allocative efficiency. More diversified firms and insurance groups were more likely to achieve efficiency and productivity gains. Higher technology investment is positively related to efficiency and productivity improvements.     

商业银行X效率与利益相关者关系——基于我国商业银行2004—2012年的经验数据

选取我国14家商业银行2004—2012年数据,采用面板Tobit模型进行实证研究,结果表明利益相关者关系对商业银行X效率有显著影响,其中业务客户关系、债权人关系对商业银行X效率的影响显著为正,而股东关系、员工关系、监管层关系对商业银行X效率的影响显著为负。     

Managerial overconfidence,overinvestment, and R&D spillover

This paper examines whether a firm will select an overoptimistic manager when a cost‐reduction investment has a spillover effect. We consider a Cournot competition model where R&D investment ex ante occurs before the process of product market competition. Our analysis reveals that there exists a unique and symmetric equilibrium for firms to delegate overoptimistic managers. We show that only when the spillover effect is sufficiently high do firms benefit from delegation. Furthermore, the equilibrium confidence level and investment decision first decrease and then increase as the spillover parameter changes. As the initial production cost increases, the equilibrium performance becomes worse.     

The peer-firm effect on firm’s investment decisions

This study investigates the effect of peer firms on firm investment strategies. We test the peer group effect hypothesis along differing levels of financially constrained firms as well as differing degrees of industry competition. Using idiosyncratic equity returns as the instrument variable, we use 2-stage least squares regression to identify the influence of peer firms’ investment decisions on a firm’s own investment policies. Our analyses empirically confirm that there is a peer group effect in making firm investment decisions. More financially constrained firms show greater dependency on peers’ investment decisions. Tests of peer sensitivity to the increase in industrial competition, however, displayed a U-shaped quadratic curve, which shows that firms have the lowest peer group effect in medium-competition markets. We claim that imitative behavior in investment is presumably weak in the mid-competition market because firms are yet to be distinguished in this market.     

Share repurchases,shareholder rights,and corporate governance provisions

Grounded in agency theory, this study seeks to explore how repurchase activity is influenced by the strength of shareholder rights. The empirical evidence shows that firms where shareholder rights are weaker tend to repurchase less stock. I argue that this is because managers of firms with weak shareholder rights are better able to exploit the weak shareholder rights and retain more cash within the firm, potentially to extract private benefits as alleged by the free cash flow hypothesis. Managers of firms with strong shareholder rights, on the contrary, are forced to disgorge cash to stockholders in the form of repurchases. In addition, I test the dividend-substitution hypothesis and find no evidence that repurchases substitute for dividends.     

Over-investment in corporate R&D,risk, and stock returns

Large-size firms which significantly increase their R&D expenditures experience subsequently three-year-long negative abnormal stock returns on the magnitude of 56 basis-points per month. We find no robust evidence of significant event-induced abnormal returns for small-size sample firms or any systematic risk changes for the small- and large- size firms. We also find that the large-size sample firms generate relatively much larger cash flows (i.e., have significantly greater over-investment discretion) and have significantly larger (over-) valuation multiples than the small-size firms. Moreover, some of their operating performance measures show signs of deterioration instead of improvement following these R&D programs. These findings are consistent with the view that investors initially underestimate the over-investment in R&D by some large-size firms that appear to be overvalued and have high cash flows at the time of the investment, only to be disappointed later.     

Attitude towards risk,uncertainty, and fixed investment

We explore the relevance of the risk attitude of managers to the investment-uncertainty relation. Higher moments of the distribution of net profits are used to measure the risk premium of the firm, from which we derive a proxy for the risk aversion of managers. Using an unbalanced panel of Dutch listed firms, we find that in general a low degree of risk aversion coincides with a positive impact of demand uncertainty on investment. More specifically, we find that risk-averse firms respond to demand uncertainty by cutting investment, while the investment undertaken by risk-taking firms responds to demand uncertainty positively.     

企业股权结构与股权转让效率——以中国大陆A股上市公司为例

通过对中国大陆A股上市公司股权转让数据的分析表明,企业股权转让更容易发生在股权较为分散的公司中,但是股权转让后的企业效率并没有明显的改善,公司控制权的转移往往对企业绩效产生负面的影响。由此可见,通过鼓励企业股权结构分散化并对控制权私人收益加以必要的管制,对提高股权转让的效率将起到非常重要的作用。     

The transformation of the German vocational training regime: evidence from firms’ training behaviour

The German system of industrial relations has undergone significant changes in the last decade. This article reflects on and provides empirical evidence for how these changes have affected the training behaviour of firms. Conventional perspectives would predict a general decline in training investment when the constraints of collective wage bargaining are loosened. Relying on a large data set on the costs and benefits of apprenticeship training for the years 2000 and 2007, we do find evidence for this hypothesis but would add that the strength of the effect varies strongly across different types of firms. Large firms have benefited much more from participating in training than have small firms and have therefore maintained their investment in training because they are able to reduce net costs by expanding the productive contributions of apprentices. This finding may help to explain the apparent resilience of the German training system in the recent economic and financial crisis.     

不完全契约下经理和债权人之间的代理成本问题研究

自詹森和麦克林提出代理成本理论以来,理论界对代理成本理论的研究,全部集中在股东与经理之间的股权代理成本和股东与债权人之间的债权代理成本。而关于经理和债权人之间的代理成本问题,几乎是空白。本文通过对经理作为“合同收益者”与“剩余收益者”双重属性的分析,提出了关于经理和债权人之间代理成本问题研究的基本思路。     

Corporate groups,liquidity, and overinvestment by Belgian firms quoted on the Brussels stock exchange

For a sample of large Belgian non-financial firms quoted on the Brussels stock exchange, it is found that investment of firms borrowing on an internal capital market is not determined by internal cash flow, while cash flow has a significant effect on investment for the other firms in the sample. Further analysis indicates that the cash flow effect is caused by overinvestment, not by financing constraints. No evidence is found that firms borrowing on an internal capital market in turn transfer surpluses of funds to other group members by investing in financial fixed assets. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.