Market Making Contracts,Firm Value,and the IPO Decision

We examine the effects of secondary market liquidity on firm value and the IPO decision. Competitive aftermarket liquidity provision is associated with reduced welfare and a discounted secondary market price that can dissuade IPOs. The competitive market fails in particular for firms or at times when uncertainty regarding fundamental value and asymmetric information are large in combination. In these cases, firm value and welfare are improved by a contract where the firm engages a designated market maker to enhance liquidity. Such contracts represent a market solution to a market imperfection, particularly for small, growth firms.     

Implicit Employment Contracts: The Limits of Management Reputation for Promoting Firm Productivity

Implicit employment contracts are a common way to motivate firm productivity but also require that employees trust management to be fair when allocating postproduction firm resources between employees and owners. We use an experiment to study the problem of motivating firm productivity, which depends on levels of owner investment and employee productive effort, when managers have an incentive to favor the owner's interests over those of the employee. Drawing on research in psychology and behavioral economics, we argue that reputation concerns can more effectively promote firm productivity when manager compensation is relatively insensitive to how much the owner is allocated after production occurs. Consistent with our predictions, we find that reputation concerns lead to greater firm productivity and higher payoffs for all firm members, but only when manager pay is relatively insensitive to the owner's ex post allocation. In addition to offering testable empirical implications, our theory and results are important because they can help explain why executive compensation is, in practice, surprisingly insensitive to owner returns.     

Diversification,Refocusing and Firm Value

At any point in time a firm faces three restructuring choices: diversify, refocus, or do nothing. This study analyses the causes and the consequences of these actions in a unified framework using the appropriate methodologies. Various factors, such as firm's characteristics and multinational nature, its industry's characteristics, its exchange and index inclusion, and divested (or acquired) segment(s)' industry conditions, are considered as the determinants of the diversifying and the refocusing decisions. The estimation results from the corresponding multinomial logit model suggest that refocusing occurs generally due to firm‐specific reasons, and diversification due to outside factors, such as industry and economic conditions. Added or dropped segment's industry profitability, its relationship to the core business of the firm, and its relatedness to the businesses of the conglomerate's other segments have a nontrivial effect on either decision. In a related analysis, the paper explicitly models and estimates the valuation consequences that are sustained by the firm after it undertakes a refocusing or a diversification action. To isolate the changes in firm's value that are due to these decisions only, a 2SLS estimation is used to control for endogeneity that arises because the factors that affect a firm's value are likely to have also induced the firm to make the corresponding decision. The novelty of my approach is in its inclusion of variables measuring the consequences due to both actions, the diversification and the refocusing, in the same valuation equation. Contrary to some earlier findings, I find no evidence of ‘diversification discount’ or ‘refocusing premium.’ The choice of this paper to analyse all corporate restructuring decisions in a unified framework yields valuable business insights into the reasons for undertaking such corporate events.     

Taxes, Financing Decisions, and Firm Value

We use cross-sectional regressions to study how a firm's value is related to dividends and debt. With a good control for profitability, the regressions can measure how the taxation of dividends and debt affects firm value. Simple tax hypotheses say that value is negatively related to dividends and positively related to debt. We find the opposite. We infer that dividends and debt convey information about profitability (expected net cash flows) missed by a wide range of control variables. This information about profitability obscures any tax effects of financing decisions.     

Investability and Firm Value

We study how investability, or openness to foreign equity investors, affects firm value in a sample of over 1,400 firms from 26 emerging markets. We find that, on average, investability is associated with a 9% valuation premium (as measured by Tobin's q). This significant valuation premium persists in firm‐fixed effects regressions, although the magnitude and robustness of the premium is somewhat lower. Analysis of the components of Tobin's q shows that firms that become investable experience significant increases in both market values and physical investment. These effects are strongest for firms that face country‐level or firm‐level financial constraints prior to becoming investable.     

Diversification,Organization, and Value of the Firm

Because corporate diversification coevolves with organizational structure, a discount for diversification, which is widely documented in the literature, can be caused by organizational structure rather than by the industrial scope of the firm. I examine this possibility based on a large sample of Japanese firms for which the legal (parent–subsidiary) structure of the organization is easily observable. I identify a significant discount for diversified firms with and without control over the organizational structure. I also find that firms with a legally segmented structure (e.g., holding companies) are deeply discounted. My results suggest that diversification and organization are both important determinants of firm value.     

企业负债率、研发投资强度与企业价值

选取2003—2010年沪深A股上市公司R＆D数据,研究R＆D投入与上市公司债务融资的相关性和R＆D投入与上市公司市场价值关联性。实证研究发现：企业的负债率越高,其研发投入越少,非国有控股上市公司所面临的债务融资约束更大;企业的研发投入对公司价值具有正向影响,并且这种影响会因企业负债水平的高低而不同。在模型中进一步加入RDI＊D负债水平交叉项后发现,相对于负债水平较低的企业,负债水平较高企业的研发投入对公司价值的正向影响是减弱的,对于非国有控股上市公司,这种减弱效应更为显著。     

Corporate Governance, Board Diversity, and Firm Value

This study examines the relationship between board diversity and firm value for Fortune 1000 firms. Board diversity is defined as the percentage of women, African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics on the board of directors. This research is important because it presents the first empirical evidence examining whether board diversity is associated with improved financial value. After controlling for size, industry, and other corporate governance measures, we find significant positive relationships between the fraction of women or minorities on the board and firm value. We also find that the proportion of women and minorities on boards increases with firm size and board size, but decreases as the number of insiders increases.     

Global Diversification, Industrial Diversification, and Firm Value

Using a sample of 44,288 firm–years between 1984 and 1997, we document an increase in the extent of global diversification over time. This trend does not reflect a substitution of global for industrial diversification. We also find that global diversification results in average valuation discounts of approximately the same magnitude as those for industrial diversification. Analysis of the changes in excess value associated with changes in diversification reveals that increases in global diversification reduce excess value, while reductions in global diversification increase excess value. These findings support the view that the costs of global diversification outweigh the benefits.     

反收购条款、并购概率与公司价值

本文选取A股民营上市公司2007～2011年的面板数据,对章程中设置反收购条款的影响进行了分析,实证结果表明反收购条款对并购的影响存在一个作用区间:当并购交易规模达到10%以上时,反收购条款能显著降低目标公司被并购的可能性,这时错列董事会条款将发挥主要的反收购作用;当交易规模低于10%时,反收购条款对并购概率没有显著影响,这时累积投票制能显著促进并购的发生。与国外的研究结果类似,反收购条款对目标公司价值具有显著的负向影响,反收购条款的主要作用表现为对管理层的保护。     

董事会内部联结、税收规避与企业价值

本文通过构建基于董事会成员相似特征形成的内部联结指数,考察了独立董事治理机制对于企业税收规避激进程度的影响及其对于企业价值的作用效果。研究发现,董事会内部联结显著正向影响企业税收规避程度,但是影响力度随着税收规避激进程度的提升而有所减弱。董事会内部联结对于企业避税活动的这种适度监管显著提升了企业价值。     

Book Value,Residual Earnings,and Equilibrium Firm Value with Asymmetric Information

The residual income valuation model (RIM) by Ohlson (1995) and Feltham and Ohlson (1995) assumes that investors are risk-neutral with homogenous beliefs. Thus, the present value of expected dividends represents firm value. The purpose of the present study is to derive a RIM in a market setting of the Kyle (1985) type. Since traders are asymmetrically informed in the Kyle setting, firm value is no longer equivalent to the present value of the firm's expected dividends. In the present model, the informed investor observes a signal about the firm's profitability, which the market maker (who sets the price) is unable to observe. The market maker infers the informed investor's private signal based on the total order flow, which is an informative but noisy signal. The analysis identifies the equilibrium firm value as a linear function of current book value, current residual income, and the aggregate order flow.     

International Diversification and Firm Value

In this paper the impact of multinationalism is examined using a valuation model incorporating geographically segmented accounting information. The results indicate that multinational companies are more highly valued than their domestic counterparts and that the valuation difference lies in all their operations and not just their foreign operations. The value advantage of MNCs appears too large to be realistically explained by cost of capital reductions and would support either that high value firms become multinationals, rather than MNCs gaining valuation benefits from foreign investments, or a pricing fad. Preliminary results support the latter explanation.     

Stocks or Options? Moral Hazard, Firm Viability, and the Design of Compensation Contracts

We consider the choice between stocks and options to provideeffort incentives to a risk-averse manager. We show that stockscan dominate options as a means of motivation only if nonviabilityrisk is substantial, as in financially distressed firms or start-ups.Options dominate stocks for other firms. These results holdregardless of the existing portfolio of the manager. We provideempirical evidence that higher bankruptcy risk is indeed correlatedwith more use of stock.     

Disentangling Value: Financing Needs,Firm Scope,and Divestitures

This paper presents a rationale for divestiture consistent with one of the reasons frequently cited by divesting firms, namely, that the firm is undervalued and splitting the firm into its component businesses will make it easier for the market to value the components accurately. When firms are undervalued due to unobservability of divisional cash flows, they may resort to divestiture to raise capital while overvalued firms will use external equity. Diversification thus might result in costly future divestiture. Firms trade off this expected cost of diversification against the benefit of higher levels of cheaper internal capital in deciding the scope of the firm. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D82, G34, L22.     

Corporate Social Responsibility,Tax Aggressiveness,and Firm Market Value

This paper examines the relationship of corporate social responsibility (CSR), tax aggressiveness, and firm market value. An economic model has been developed to show that profit‐maximization firms are willing to incur additional costs in CSR, such as paying more taxes, as long as they can differentiate their products from non‐CSR firms, and that socially conscious consumers will buy products from CSR firms at prices higher than those of non‐CSR firms. The empirical study in this paper indicates that the higher the CSR ranking of a firm, the less likely a firm is to engage in tax aggressiveness. It also indicates that a reputation of higher CSR will enhance firm market value. Using Canadian companies listed in the S&P/TSX 60 index, I find that both firms’ five‐year effective tax rates and annual effective tax rates are positively associated with their overall CSR scores as well as with their social scores. Firms’ five‐year effective tax rates are also positively associated with their governance index. I also find that firms’ overall CSR ranking and governance scores are positively associated with their market value.     

Liquidity,the Value of the Firm,and Corporate Finance

The theory of corporate finance has been based on the idea that a company's market value is determined mainly by just two variables: the company's expected after‐tax operating cash flows or earnings, and the risk associated with producing them. The authors argue that there is another important factor affecting a company's value: the liquidity of its own securities, debt as well as equity. The paper supports this argument by reviewing the large and growing body of evidence showing that differences—and changes—in liquidity can have major effects on the pricing of corporate stocks and bonds or, equivalently, on investors' required returns for holding them. The authors also suggest that the liquidity of a company's securities can be managed by corporate policies and actions. For those companies whose value is likely to be increased by having more liquid securities—which is by no means true of all companies (mature firms that don't need outside capital may well benefit from having more concentrated ownership and hence less liquidity)—management should consider actions such as reducing leverage and substituting dividends for stock repurchases as well as measures designed to increase the effectiveness of their disclosure and investor relations program and the size of their investor base.     

Value, Survival, and the Evolution of Firm Organizational Structure

We examine corporate product diversification as a dynamic process. Consistent with prior research, we find that the average diversification discount is about 8% when using the standard value-multiple approach. However, we find that a significant portion of the diversification discount arises from benchmark comparisons of value ratios of mature firms with those of very young firms that are more likely to have high value multiples. The magnitude of the diversification discount falls by 15% to 30% when we control for firm age. We also show that diversification reduces the mortality rate of firms, and we provide evidence that mature firms pursue diversification strategies partly as a means to exit stagnant business segments for industries that are more highly valued.     

管理者特质、负债融资与企业价值

本文基于行为金融理论和高层梯队理论,选用2008-2013年我国A股上市公司数据作为研究样本,区分企业产权性质,实证检验了拥有不同特质的管理者对负债融资行为与企业价值的影响。研究结果显示:我国上市公司的负债融资可以降低企业代理成本,对企业价值有正面的治理效应;管理者为男性、教育水平越高、任期越短、有财务相关工作经历时,越容易出现过度自信,也更偏好使用负债融资,其中管理者性别、教育水平、工作经历更是可以显著提高负债融资对企业价值的提升作用。进一步区分产权性质后发现,和国有公司相比,非国有公司负债融资对企业价值的提升效果更好;非国有公司管理者教育水平、工作经历与负债融资的正相关更强,也更能显著提高负债融资对企业价值的提升作用。本研究不仅丰富了管理者特质和企业融资研究领域的文献和经验证据,而且也表明了在研究负债融资对企业价值的治理效应时,管理者特质和公司的产权性质是重要的考量因素。     

Firm Value,Information Problems and the Internal Capital Market

We examine how information problems between the firm and the investor affect the value of an internal capital market. While the extant literature finds that, on average, the diversified firm's access to an internal capital market is positively related to firm value, this paper finds that the results hold only for firms which face low levels of information problems. Firms facing the high levels of information problems realize no value from internal capital market access, consistent with the Jensen Free Cash Flow hypothesis. When information problems are large, agency costs dominate any savings that result from using an internal capital market to avoid selling under-priced securities in the external capital markets.