Economic policy uncertainty and corporate cash policy: International evidence

I investigate the influences of economic policy uncertainty on corporate cash policy. The findings show that there is a positive association between economic policy uncertainty and cash holdings, as well as the propensity to save cash out of operating cash flow. Further analyses suggests that economic policy uncertainty affects corporate cash policy by influencing firms’ precautionary saving motives and the effect is larger when firms have difficulty in raising external finance. Using the new index developed by Baker et al. (2016), I extend the literature on economic policy uncertainty and show that it is an important macro-level factor in influencing corporate cash policy.     

Investor protection and capital structure: International evidence

Institutions, environments, and firm characteristics are important determinants of capital structure. From a sample of firms across 45 countries, we find that investor protection plays an important role in the determinants of capital structure: firms in countries with better creditor protection have higher leverage, while firms in countries where shareholder rights are better protected use more equity funds. The other differences in institutions and environments also explain the cross-sectional variation in the aggregate capital structure across counties. Furthermore, firm characteristics identified by previous studies, as correlated in a cross-section with capital structure in developed markets, are similarly correlated in the present sample of countries. The evidence presented herein indicates that institutional differences are as important as firm characteristics in determining capital structure.     

Investor protection and corporate cash holdings around the world: new evidence

We provide new evidence that firms under weak governance regimes hold less cash than firms operating under strong governance, contrary to previous literature. Our findings also establish that there are two independent effects for the de jure and de facto aspects of governance that protect minority shareholders. Consistent with managerial empire building prediction, our study reveals that firms deplete their excess cash by overinvesting and this effect is exacerbated in countries with weak governance. The excess cash depletion has an adverse impact on firm performance, more so in countries with weak investor protection which is in support of the agency costs explanation.     

The effects of corporate bailout on firm performance: International evidence

Not all corporate bailouts are the same. We study corporate bailouts from around the world during 1987–2005. Among these bailed-out firms, some firms are economically distressed while others are financially distressed. Some firms are bailed out with cash (either as equity or as loans) while others are bailed out with debt relief. Some firms are bailed out by the government while others are bailed out by other stakeholders. We examine these firms’ operating performance before and after their bailouts, but specifically across different bailout types, and we also measure their stock returns surrounding their bailout announcements.     

National culture and corporate debt maturity

We investigate the influence of national culture on corporate debt maturity choice. Based on the framework of Williamson, we argue that culture located in social embeddedness level can shape contracting environments by serving as an informal constraint that affects human actors’ incentives and choices in market exchange. We therefore expect national culture to be related to debt maturity structure after controlling for legal, political, financial, and economic institutions. Using Hofstede’s four cultural dimensions (uncertainty avoidance, collectivism, power distance, and masculinity) as proxies for culture, and using a sample of 114,723 firm-years from 40 countries over the 1991-2006 period, we find robust evidence that firms located in countries with high uncertainty avoidance, high collectivism, high power distance, and high masculinity tend to use more short-term debt. We interpret our results as consistent with the view that national culture helps explain cross-country variations in the maturity structure of corporate debt.     

CEO overconfidence and corporate debt maturity

This paper extends our knowledge of corporate debt maturity structure by examining whether and to what extent overconfident CEOs affect maturity decisions. Consistent with a demand side story, we find that firms with overconfident CEOs tend to adopt a shorter debt maturity structure by using a higher proportion of short-term debt (due within 12 months). This behavior of overconfident CEOs is not deterred by the high liquidity risk associated with such a financing strategy. Our demand side explanation remains robust even after considering six possible alternative drivers including a competing supply side explanation (in which creditors are reluctant to extend long-term debt to overconfident CEOs).     

Debt, debt structure and corporate performance after unsuccessful takeovers: evidence from targets that remain independent

Significant increases in the level of target leverage have been previously documented following unsuccessful takeover attempts. This increased leverage may signal managerial commitment to improved performance, suggesting that corporate performance and leverage should be positively related. If, however, the increased leverage leads to further managerial entrenchment, then corporate performance and leverage should be negatively related. In this paper, we reexamine both motivations for the observed increase in leverage. Furthermore, we argue that changes in the composition of debt are also important, besides changes in the level of leverage. In particular, bank debt has frequently been assigned a proactive, beneficial monitoring role in the literature. Besides confirming the increase in the level of leverage, we also document increases in bank debt surrounding cancelled takeovers. As a result, we find a more complex relation between corporate performance and debt use: Overall, the relation between corporate performance and leverage is negative, as predicted by a dominant entrenchment effect. However, increases in bank debt reduce the adverse effect of the increase in the level of leverage.     

Institutional investment horizons,corporate governance,and credit ratings: International evidence

Using a comprehensive set of firms from 57 countries over the 2000–2016 period, we examine the relation between institutional investor horizons and firm-level credit ratings. Controlling for firm- and country-specific factors, as well as for firm fixed effects, we find that larger long-term (short-term) institutional ownership is associated with higher (lower) credit ratings. This finding is robust to sample composition, alternative estimation methods, and endogeneity concerns. Long-term institutional ownership affects ratings more during times of higher expropriation risk, for firms with weaker internal corporate governance, and for those in countries with lower-quality institutional environments. Additional analysis shows that long-term investors facilitate access to debt markets for firms facing severe agency problems. These findings suggest that, unlike their short-term counterparts, long-term investors improve a firm's credit risk profile through effective monitoring.     

Debt maturity structure of Chinese companies

Numerous studies have focused on the theoretical and empirical aspects of corporate capital structure since the 1960s. As a new branch of capital structure, however, debt maturity structure has not yet received as much attention as the debt-equity choice. We use the existing theories of corporate debt maturity to investigate the potential determinants of debt maturity of the Chinese listed firms. In addition to the traditional estimation methods, the system-GMM technique is used to explicitly control for the endogeneity problem. We find that the size of the firm, asset maturity and liquidity have significant effects in extending the maturity of debt employed by Chinese companies. The amount of collateralized assets and growth opportunities also tend to be important. However, proxies for a firm's quality and effective tax rate apparently report mixed or unexpected results. Debt market and equity market conditions are also examined in relation to corporate loan maturity. The system-GMM results show that market factors seem to influence debt maturity decisions. Finally, corporate equity ownership structure has also been found to have some impact on debt maturity mix.     

Integrating corporate social responsibility criteria into executive compensation and firm innovation: International evidence

Using a large sample of firms from 30 countries, we find that the integration of corporate social responsibility (CSR) criteria into executive compensation is associated with greater innovation output in countries around the world. We also find that this positive association is stronger in countries with weak stakeholder orientation, countries with weak legal environments, and countries without mandatory CSR reporting requirements. These findings suggest that CSR contracting can compensate for institutional voids and high stakeholder demand for CSR, and thereby foster firm innovation. The results of the channel analyses suggest that a greater level of employee innovation productivity, enhanced managerial risk-taking, and greater responsiveness of firms' R&D investment to their investment opportunities play a significant role in the association between CSR contracting and innovation. Overall, our study demonstrates in a global context the importance of linking executive compensation to nonfinancial criteria in addition to financial criteria, and it documents the heterogeneity in the effect of CSR contracting on firm innovation in different countries.     

Labor protection,ownership concentration,and cost of equity capital: international evidence

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - In this study, we investigate how labor protection institutions and the presence of controlling shareholders interact to determine a firm’s...     

Debt structure and corporate performance in emerging markets

This paper examines the effects of public and bank debt financing on firm performance in emerging markets. Using data on 700 publicly traded firms from the BRIC countries, it is documented that bank debt may have a positive effect on firm profitability. While overall market assessment of bank debt financing is negative, it is found that fully bank-financed firms lose less of their market value. Main findings remain unchanged after addressing potential endogeneity issues by introducing a novel instrumental variable. Overall, the results suggest that higher levels of bank financing may have positive effects on firm profitability and market valuation.     

Time-varying managerial overconfidence and corporate debt maturity structure

We examine the impact of managerial overconfidence on corporate debt maturity. We build upon the argument that managerial overconfidence is likely to mitigate the underinvestment problem, which is often the major concern for long-term debt investors. Within this context, we hypothesise that managerial overconfidence increases debt maturity. Our empirical evidence, based on time-varying measures of overconfidence derived from computational linguistic analysis and directors’ dealings in their own companies’ shares, supports this hypothesis. Specifically, we find that the changes in both first person singular pronouns and optimistic tone are positively related to the change in debt maturity. Moreover, we find that the insider trading-based overconfidence of CEO, who is most likely to influence investment decision and thus the underinvestment problem, has a stronger impact on debt maturity than the overconfidence of other directors (e.g. CFO). Overall, our study provides initial evidence for a positive overconfidence-debt maturity relation via overconfidence mitigating the agency cost of long-term debt.     

CEO inside debt and corporate debt maturity structure

This paper examines the relation between chief executive officer (CEO) inside debt holdings and corporate debt maturity. We provide robust evidence that inside debt has a positive effect on short-maturity debt and that this effect is concentrated in financially unconstrained firms that face lower refinancing risk. Our analysis further shows that CEO inside debt helps reduce the cost of debt financing. Overall, our results indicate that managerial holdings of inside debt facilitate access to external debt financing and reduce refinancing risk, thus incentivizing managers to use less costly shorter term debt.     

Debt maturity structure and the 1997 Asian financial crisis

The paper investigates the effects of firm-specific and country-specific characteristics, and the 1997 Asian financial crisis on the debt maturity structure of firms in the Asia Pacific region. The results indicate that firms in this region have a target optimal debt maturity structure, and the maturity structure decision of a firm is driven by both its own characteristics and the economic environment. They also reveal that the crisis had significant effect on firm's debt maturity structure and their determinants.     

Debt maturity dispersion and the cost of bank loans

This paper examines the relation between corporate debt maturity dispersion and the pricing and terms of bank loans. Analyzing a sample of U.S. bank loans from 2002 to 2016, we find that firms with a dispersed debt maturity structure pay a lower interest rate. The rate-reduction effect is significant only for firms without a credit rating. For these firms, spreading debt maturity dates also results in lower commitment fees, fewer covenant restrictions, and less collateral in their loan contracts. The impact of debt maturity dispersion on the pricing and structure of bank loans is stronger when borrowers have higher rollover risk or when the need for monitoring is greater. Our results suggest that dispersion in debt maturity structure mitigates the agency problem associated with shareholder–creditor conflicts by reducing rollover risk and alleviating the need for monitoring, which results in borrowers receiving more favorable terms in loan contracts.     

Central bank communication,corporate maturity mismatch and innovation

This paper analyzes the relationship between central bank communication and corporate innovation. The results show that: (1) Communication in a loose direction of the central bank will promote corporate innovation. (2) The higher the degree of consistency between words and deeds, the stronger the positive impact of central bank communication on corporate innovation. (3) The increase in the proportion of policy continuity words in the central bank communication text will amplify the positive impact of the loose communication on corporate innovation. (4) Communication in the loose direction of the central bank will inhibit the corporate behavior of “Corporate Maturity Mismatch”, so as to promote corporate innovation. (5) The positive impact of central bank communication on corporate innovation is more significant in companies with stable investor sentiment and a high degree of management myopia. (6) The period of low moderation of monetary policy will help to strengthen the role of central bank communication in promoting corporate innovation.