The liquidation/merger alternative some results for the UK corporate sector

Previous researchers have explicitly extended the definition of corporate failure to include distressed acquired firms when they are (mis) classified by statistical models as failing. We argue that this approach is erroneous, since the acquisition of a financially distressed firm is an entirely separate economic outcome from corporate failure. This paper reports some new evidence for the UK corporate sector where the acquisition of a distressed firm is modelled as a distinct alternative to corporate failure. Our empirical results suggest that it is feasible to develop statistical models which are able to discriminate, with a reasonably high degree of accuracy, between those distressed firms which fail and those where a timely merger appears to serve as a viable alternative to corporate bankruptcy.     

Do self-serving managers choose Chapter 11 filing over out-of-court restructuring?

I investigate whether self-serving managers in financially distressed firms influence a firm’s decision on the choice of debt restructuring method. I show that there is a non-linear relationship between managerial ownership and the probability of Chapter 11 filing. I find that distressed firms are more likely to choose Chapter 11 with the increase of managerial ownership when managerial ownership is in the 5%–25% range. I also find a significant curvilinear relation between managerial ownership and the probability of Chapter 11. My results are consistent with the hypothesis that managerial ownership plays a significant role in corporate decisions.     

资产流动性损失下财务危机重组研究

本文从资产结构的角度探讨资产流动性对财务危机重组的影响，建立了一个考虑资产流动性的财务危机模型。同时根据股东一经理人是否能与债权人协商及公司债务契约中有无优先偿债禁止条款，在不同情形下，分析了财务危机中各个请求权人因应策略和投资效率。本文研究表明，债权人会容忍某些程度的投资无效率以避免无谓的资产流动性损失；当债权人无法协商时，无论投资项目净现值为正或负，股东一经理人都将进行投资，使财务危机公司发生过度投资无效率问题；当债权人可协商时，虽然还是无法完全消除财务危机公司过度投资行为，但是可以改善上述问题。     

Capital investment and determinants of financial constraints in Estonia

Unlike previous empirical work concerning investment behavior and the determinants of liquidity constraints, we use a switching regression framework when sample separation is unknown and endogenous and firms are assumed to operate either in the financially constrained or in the financially unconstrained regime. By using new panel data for Estonian companies during 1993–2002 we find that: (i) investment behavior is characterized by two distinct regimes; (ii) the likelihood of being financially constrained is higher in firms that are recently privatized, small and where ownership is concentrated in the hands of insiders and the state; (iii) the actual probabilities of operating in the financially constrained regime are quite high and essentially stable during the whole period under consideration; (iv) ownership structure affects investment beyond its indirect effects through financial constraints.     

Creditor rights,financial health,and corporate investment efficiency

This paper analyzes the influence of creditor rights on investment efficiency and how firms’ financial health shapes this influence. Using time-series changes within a country and cross-country variations in creditor rights, I find that stronger protection of creditors improves investment efficiency in healthy firms but worsens it in distressed firms. The impact on investment efficiency operates more through changes in overinvestment than in underinvestment. Alternative proxies for creditor rights control for both contractual and enforcement rights. The results are robust to alternative model specifications and to controls for omitted variables.     

Local institutional shareholders and corporate hedging policies

This paper examines the effectiveness of monitoring function from institutional investors on corporate hedging strategy in Taiwan over the period from 2005 to 2012. The empirical results show that institutional investors are effective monitors of corporate risk management to enhance the probability and extent of hedging. In addition, the monitoring function from institutional investors is effective for mitigating the risk-shifting problem of high leveraged firms. Moreover, local institutional investors play more important role in monitoring distressed firm's magnitude of hedging than foreign institutional investors. These results are robust to the consideration of endogeneity, selection bias, and industrial difference. This is the first empirical evidence in the literature regarding the monitoring effect of institutional investors on risk management strategy from the angle of monitoring costs.     

How do technological innovations affect corporate investment and hiring?

In this paper, we study the relation between technological advancement, and corporate investment and hiring. We build a corporate investment model with dynamic technology conditions, and we find the optimal investment and labor inputs increase in response to technological innovation shocks. Consistent with the model predictions, we empirically show that corporate investment and hiring increase following technological advancements, using various measures of technological innovation. Further, we find the effect is stronger for firms in more innovative industry, firms with higher capital intensity and firms with higher market-to-book ratio. Our findings provide evidence for the endogenous growth theory, i.e., firms with successful innovations tend to expand in capital investment and employment, suggesting technological innovations are, to some extent, Hicks-neutral.     

Performance compensation contracts and CEOs’ incentive to shift risk to debtholders: An empirical analysis

The paper investigates the relationships among CEO incentive contracts, manager ownership, charter value, and bank risk taking. We analyze whether the presence and magnitude of incentive contracts induce CEOs of financially distressed firms and firms with high manager ownership to take unprofitable risks that shift wealth from debtholders to equity holders. Our sample focuses on banks that had both the incentive and opportunity to shift risks, and compares them with those that did not. We compare weak and strong banks in periods when the banks’ principal creditor, the FDIC, was a lenient and then a stringent monitor. The evidence is consistent with bonus compensation inducing CEOs of financially weak firms to shift risk to debtholders only if they do not have large insider ownership. The evidence is also consistent with these contracts rewarding CEOs for their effort to manage unforeseeable risk albeit not their ability. Low charter value banks with high managerial ownership took profitable risk during the lenient regulatory period.     

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。     

Labor's liquidity service and firing costs

This paper studies the specific effect that firing costs can have on firms facing liquidity constraints. When firing costs are zero and a time gap exists between production and its associated revenues, firing allows firms to hold on to their liquid assets by saving on wages, and thus, allows firms to cope better with liquidity shocks when external financing is too costly or unavailable. I refer to this feature as labor's liquidity service. Higher firing costs reduces the value of labor's liquidity service, and thus, increases firms' incentive for hoarding liquidity and reduces firms' demand for production inputs. In addition to this negative effect at the creation margin of production, firing costs have a relatively higher positive effect on the destruction margin of production of financially restricted firms. This paper presents a model that develops these ideas and shows that the presence of firing costs has a stronger negative effect on the output of firms facing liquidity constraints. Regression analysis, based on country-industry panel data sets, provides empirical evidence consistent with the liquidity service effect of firing costs. I find a relatively stronger negative effect of firing costs on the output of industries with higher liquidity requirements and a relatively stronger negative effect of firing costs on the output of small, and more likely financially constrained, firms.     

Financial health and airline safety

Agency‐cost models suggest that firms may pursue riskier strategies in times of financial distress. For example, stockholders of financially weak firms in industries where quality cannot be observed ex‐ante have an incentive to compromise safety and quality to maximize current period profit. However, there exists only a modest amount of empirical evidence that relates financial health to the risk‐taking behavior of firms. We explore this relationship for the airline industry. Using bond ratings to proxy for financial health and airline mishaps to measure safety, we find a significant correlation: airlines with higher quality bond ratings are less likely to experience mishaps than airlines with lower quality ratings. On average, a whole letter grade better bond rating is associated with a 10% lower probability of a mishap. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

管理者过度自信与企业投资现金敏感度——基于英国上市公司的实证研究

本文以英国上市公司为样本,发现融资约束公司普遍表现出管理者过度自信与投资现金流敏感性之间显著的正相关关系。与此相反,这种积极的关系不能在融资无约束公司中找到。这个结果和预期相一致,即在融资约束公司中过度自信的管理者的投资决策应该比非过度自信的管理者投资决策对现金流更加敏感。因为,现金流的增加能够促使过度自信的管理者加大投资并达到他们想要的水平。     

Cross-border mergers and acquisitions with heterogeneous firms: Technology vs. market motives

The most common form of foreign direct investment (FDI) is cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A). A common explanation for M&A activity identified in the industrial organization literature is that firms seek technological expertise. However, this has not been examined in the FDI literature. In this paper, I develop and estimate a model of cross-border M&A and focus on the technology seeking explanation. In particular, I develop a general equilibrium model of exporting, greenfield FDI, technology-seeking cross-border M&A, and market-seeking cross-border M&A with heterogeneous firms. The model predicts that firms from a larger country are more likely to acquire in a smaller country when M&A activity is driven by a technology-seeking motive, but the opposite is true when it is driven by a market-seeking motive. Using detailed data on worldwide M&A activity from 1985 to 2007, I find empirical evidence that cross-border M&A activity exhibits behavior consistent with this prediction.     

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.     

Ultimate Controllers,Ownership and the Probability of Insolvency in Financially Distressed Firms

This paper investigates the impact of corporate ownership and control on the outcome of financial distress. It is argued that the likelihood of financial distress resulting in insolvency depends on whether firms have controllers, the type of controllers and their cash flow ownership. Using a sample of 484 UK firms, 81 of which filed for insolvency, we show that financially distressed firms with controllers are more likely to be insolvent than widely held firms, where the probability of insolvency is greater when controllers are family or financial institutions. However, the probability of insolvency reduces significantly as the controllers' cash flow ownership increases beyond 10%. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of the board and the audit committee in corporate risk management

This paper examines the impact of corporate governance on corporate risk-management activities in S&P 500 firms over the period 2004–2010 by measuring the characteristics of the board directors and audit committee. Our results show that the board of directors, especially the audit committee, plays an important role in the firm’s hedging decisions, including whether to hedge and to what extent. Such evidence is even stronger in high-leveraged firms with large risk-shifting incentives. These results are robust to the consideration of endogenous concerns, a board corporate governance index, and industrial effects. Our study contributes to the literature by showing the influential role of the audit committee on corporate risk management.     

Financial constraints and corporate investments during the current financial and economic crisis: The credit crunch and investment decisions of Slovenian firms

We investigate the effect of financial constraints on the investment decisions of Slovenian firms during the current financial and economic crisis. By estimating the error-correction model and the Euler-equation specification, we found that corporate investments were significantly affected by financial constraints during the crisis. The effect of financial constraints intensified in 2009 and alleviated slightly in 2010, although still being significantly more intense than before the crisis hit the economy. By estimating a switching regression model with unknown sample separation that enabled us to address the problem of judgemental sample separation, we were also able to estimate the error-correction model separately for financially constrained and financially unconstrained firms. The results indicate that financial constraints have a significant effect on both financially constrained and financially unconstrained firms, although corporate investments were more severely affected in financially constrained firms.     

Time preference and real investment

This paper studies the investment timing problem of an entrepreneur with a non-tradable real option with undiversifiable risk. We find that the time preference can have a significant impact on the risk attitude toward the idiosyncratic risk, which results from the wealth effect on the implied option value. If the agent is impatient (patient), an increase in idiosyncratic volatility increases (decreases) the agent’s value and delays (hastens) investment. This finding suggests several important implications and empirical predictions for investment decisions in private firms and public firms with concentrated ownership.     

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.     

Optimal Precision of Accounting Information in Debt Financing

This paper studies qualitative characteristics of accounting systems that are used in debt financing. We consider a financially constrained firm that provides to lenders information on the value of assets that serve as collateral in a financing contract for a risky investment project. We find that the investor prefers an accounting system that provides biased signals about the value of assets. This bias adjusts the information content of the signals to maximize the probability of undertaking the project. Under fair value accounting, low book values are more precise measures of actual value than high book values, which is consistent with conditional conservatism. Next, we study accounting risk to study the effect of institutions that govern the financial reporting policy based on the optimal precision. We find that fair value measurement introduces greater accounting risk and is preferred by financially constrained firms to measurement at historical cost.