Capital structure and corporate governance quality: Evidence from the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS)

Grounded in agency theory, this study explores how capital structure is influenced by aggregate corporate governance quality. We measure governance quality using broad-based comprehensive governance metrics provided by the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS). The empirical evidence reveals a robust inverse association between leverage and governance quality. Firms with poor governance are significantly more leveraged. It appears that leverage substitutes for corporate governance in alleviating agency conflicts. Further, we utilize empirical methods that control for endogeneity and show that poor governance quality likely brings about, and does not merely reflect, higher leverage. Our results are important as they show that the overall quality of corporate governance has a material impact on critical corporate decisions such as capital structure choices.     

Corporate Ownership Structure in Austria

This paper aims to add to the knowledge about ownership structure in Austria. It assesses ownership concentration and the relative importance of the investor categories banks, the state, families, and domestic and foreign firms on the basis of a sample of 600 of the largest non-financial corporations. Balance sheet data, internal rates of return calculations and regression estimates show that not only ownership concentration, but also the identity of the large controlling shareholder is relevant to efficient governance of corporations. While foreign control increases profitability, particularly state control is detrimental to shareholder wealth maximization. Likewise, profit margin equation estimates cannot reject the entrenchment hypothesis and/or expropriation of minority shareholders.     

Mergers and corporate debt financing

We investigate the effect of mergers on corporate debt financing using time series analysis. We find that corporate debt use increases during periods of very high merger activity but is not significantly affected by variations within the normal range of merger activity. Traditional trade-off and pecking order variables also significantly affect corporate financing choice.     

Currency crises and foreign credit in emerging markets: Credit crunch or demand effect?

Currency crises of the past decade highlighted the importance of balance-sheet effects of large devaluations. Currency crisis literature identified a decline in credit as one of the channels through which such crises affect real economic activity. We find empirical evidence of the existence of this channel and quantify its extent and persistence: controlling for a host of fundamentals, we find a decline in foreign credit to emerging market private firms of about 25 percent in the first year following large depreciations. This decline is especially large in the first five months, is less pronounced in the second year, and disappears entirely by the third year. We show that only about a quarter of the initial decline in credit could be attributed to the “credit crunch,” while the rest of the decline is due to contracting demand. After six months, however, most of the credit decline could be attributed to supply effects.     

Organizational transparency and power in firm ownership networks

When public institutions do not support information disclosure and contract enforcement, controlling owners may compensate by setting up ownership networks that facilitate the exchange of resources and alignment of interests. We examine how firms’ controlling owners draw power from ownership networks to provide access to resources for or to expropriate resources from their firms. Horizontal power originates from network centrality and is associated with resource access whereas vertical power originates from principal-principal agency conflicts and is associated with exploitation of minority shareholders. We highlight the impact of horizontal and vertical power through their interaction effects with transparency and disclosure (TD) practices on fixed investments and performance in Russian firms. We find that TD and horizontal power or connectedness are substitutes, while whereas TD and vertical power are complements in their effects on fixed investment and firm performance. Without a strong commitment to TD, powerful owners may thus deprive the firm of productive investments.     

Political economy of private firms in China

The sweeping change in political economy associated with the rapid growth of the private sector in China is rarely studied empirically in the economics literature. Using four cross-sectional surveys of private firms between 1995 and 2010, we examine the dynamics of rent creation from Party membership and other political connections when the regime changed from anti-capitalistic to pro-capitalistic during the period 2002–2004. We find that entrepreneurs with political connection enjoyed significantly more rents only after the constitutional amendments. This finding sheds lights on the nature of the political economy of today’s Chinese economy. Endogeneity/causality problems are addressed.     

Political participation and entrepreneurial initial public offerings in China

This paper examines the economic consequences of political participation by entrepreneurs in China. Using unique data on political participation and initial public offerings by entrepreneurial firms, we find that firms controlled by entrepreneurs who participate in politics exhibit superior post-IPO performance. We also find that firms characterized by political participation are subject to less underpricing. Furthermore, the superior performance is concentrated among firms that operate in an environment characterized by rich rent-seeking opportunities instead of abundant business opportunities, suggesting that political participation is facilitating rent seeking rather than serving simply as a proxy for political recognition for entrepreneurship.     

Does top management Team’s academic experience promote corporate innovation? Evidence from China

This study investigates whether top management teams’ academic experience affects corporate innovation, using manually-collected data on Chinese firms from the period of 2008–2017. The results indicate that academic experience has a strong positive effect on corporate innovation. The positive effect of academic experience on corporate innovation is more pronounced, when firms grow faster or are non-state-owned. By exploring the transmission channels, the results generally show that academic experience influences corporate innovation by improving internal controls and reducing the degree of information asymmetry. These findings are among the first empirical evidence of the association between academic experience of top management teams and corporate innovation.     

BOARD GOVERNANCE: DOES OWNERSHIP MATTER?

Good governance is crucial to achieving an organization's mission. Nevertheless, little is known about how the structure of governance is influenced by the nonprofit (NPO) or for‐profit ownership (FPO) structure of an organization, partly because they tend to be active in different sectors. In this paper we overcome this challenge by using data from a global sample of 392 microfinance institutions. The results show that the average NPO has a larger board, more female directors, and a higher number of board meetings than the average FPO. Moreover, where there are larger boards and more frequent board meetings, this has a positive effect on the financial performance of NPOs. It is thus confirmed that ownership structures influence boards’ characteristics and that some board mechanisms are more efficient in some ownership structures than in others. An effective board design should thus be based on a firm's ownership structure.     

完善我国公司治理和财务治理模式的思考

随着国有企业改革的深化,人们越来越认识到公司治理和财务治理模式不完善是国有企业存在的深层次矛盾,是阻碍国有企业改革的关键所在,因此必须尽快完善我国国有企业公司治理和财务治理模式,才能使其适应市场的变化和竞争的要求。     

终极产权论、股权结构及公司绩效

本文应用终极产权论 (theprincipleofultimateownership)对中国上市公司的控股主体重新进行分类 ,结果发现 ,中国 84%的上市公司最终仍由政府控制 ,而非政府控制的比例仅为 1 6% ,因此目前上市公司的股本结构仍然是国家主导型的。然而 ,官方统计报告中对股本类型所做的国有股与法人股之分类 ,不可避免地导致了对中国上市公司终极产权者的模糊界定 ,进而使许多先前从事股权结构对公司绩效影响的研究误入歧途。本文按照新的控股主体分类标准对不同的控股类型———如国家直接控股模式与国家间接控股模式等 ,进行了绩效筛选比较 ,并发现中国上市公司的股权结构与公司绩效确实密切相关。具体来说 ,在国家最终掌控的上市公司中 ,相对来讲代理效率损失最低的企业具有以下特点 :(1 )国家间接控股 ;(2 )同行同专业的公司控股 ;(3 )整体上市。此结论为今后上市公司的公司治理结构、特别是股权结构的改革方向提供了重要的实证依据与理论启示。