Essays on Capital Markets and Corporate Disclosure

Essays on Capital Markets and Corporate Disclosure
Author: Danil A. Borilo
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2016
Genre:
ISBN:

This thesis studies how a firm's disclosure decisions are affected by the interaction between prevailing financial reporting regulation and managerial incentives. Chapter 1 summarizes studies related to this thesis. I focus on rules that require a firm to issue regular financial statements. As a result, the release of some information about a firm's performance and financial condition is inevitable. However, since financial statements do not fully reflect all value-relevant information, a firm's manager can still affect the interpretation of this information via voluntary disclosure. In Chapter 2, I study how reputational concerns of a firm's manager affect her voluntary disclosure decisions. I show that interpretation of both the firm's report and voluntarily disclosed information depend on the timing of the disclosure relative to disclosures made by other firms in the same industry. In Chapter 3, I consider the case when private information of the firm's manager cannot be credibly communicated to outside investors and a mandatory financial report is the only available information channel about firm value. As a result, the noisiness of a financial report will lead investors to overvalue some firms and undervalue others. I show that allowing for misreporting can increase social welfare if a firm must rely on external capital in order to finance its investment opportunities. Overall, my results emphasize the importance of taking into account strategic disclosure decisions of managers for regulators, investors, and analysts.

U.S. Corporate Governance

U.S. Corporate Governance
Author: Donald H. Chew
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2009-08-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780231519984

Corporate governance constitutes the internal and external institutions, markets, policies, and processes designed to help companies maximize their efficiency and value. In this collection of classic and current articles from the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, thought leaders such as Michael Jensen and Robert Monks discuss the corporate mission of value maximization and the accomplishments and limitations of the U.S. governance system in achieving that end. Essays address the elements driving corporate value: the board of directors, compensation for CEOs and other employees, incentives and organizational structure, external ownership and control, role of markets, and financial reporting. They evaluate best practice methods, challenges in designing equity plans, transferable stock options, the controversy over executive compensation, the values of decentralization, identifying and attracting the "right" investors, the evolution of shareholder activism, creating value through mergers and acquisitions, and the benefits of just saying no to Wall Street's "earnings game." Grounded in solid research and practice, U.S. Corporate Governance is a crucial companion for navigating the world of modern finance.

Corporate Governance and Capital Flows in a Global Economy

Corporate Governance and Capital Flows in a Global Economy
Author: Peter K. Cornelius
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 532
Release: 2003
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780195347586

This volume is a timely and insightful exploration into the issues of corporate governance and the impact of corporate governance practices on investments in developing countries. Sponsored by the World Economic Forum, INSEAD, and Wharton, this book collects original essays from senior researchers at the worlds top academic institutions as well as from key policymakers and business leaders, It analyzes global aspects of governance in relation to such issues as corporate performance, privatization, venture capitalism, and workers. With global financial markets having become more integrated, the book pays particular attention to the role of corporate governance in emerging-market economies and international capital flows. Rich in facts and ideas, Corporate Governance and Capital Flows in a Global Economy is a must read for anyone interested in financial crises international risk management, and global competitiveness.

Essays in Corporate Finance and Corporate Governance

Essays in Corporate Finance and Corporate Governance
Author: David De Angelis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2012
Genre:
ISBN:

My dissertation contains three essays in corporate finance and corporate governance. The first essay studies the effect of information frictions across corporate hierarchies on internal capital allocation decisions, using the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) as a quasi-natural experiment. SOX requires firms to enhance their internal controls to improve the reliability of financial reporting across corporate hierarchies. I find that after SOX, the capital allocation decision in conglomerates is more sensitive to performance as reported by the business segments. The effects are most pronounced when conglomerates are prone to information problems within the organization and least pronounced when they still suffer from internal control weaknesses after SOX. Moreover, conglomerates' productivity and market value relative to stand-alone firms increase after SOX. These results support the argument that inefficiencies in the capital allocation process are partly due to information frictions. My findings also shed light on some unintended effects of SOX on large and complex firms. The second essay is co-authored with Yaniv Grinstein and investigates how firms tie CEO compensation to performance. We take advantage of new compensation disclosure requirements issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2006. Firms vary in their choice of performance measures and horizons, and in their reliance on pre-specified goals. Consistent with optimal contracting theories, we find that firms choose performance measures that are more informative of CEO actions, and rely less on pre-specified goals when it is more costly to contract on CEO actions. The third essay investigates the design of division managers (DMs) incentive contracts again taking advantage of the disclosure requirements. I find that firms do not use relative performance evaluation across divisions and that in general most of DM compensation incentives are associated with firm performance instead of division performance. Furthermore, division performance-based incentives tend to be smaller in complex firms, when within-organization conflicts are potentially more severe. I also find that when the probability of promotion to CEO is lower, DM ownership requirements are more stringent and DM compensation incentives are greater. These results support notions that influence costs as well as promotion-based incentives are important considerations in designing DMs contracts.

International Corporate Governance After Sarbanes-Oxley

International Corporate Governance After Sarbanes-Oxley
Author: Paul Ali
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2011-07-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1118161122

"The Sabanes-Oxley Act has been one of the most significant developments in corporate and securities regulation since the New Deal. This collection of important articles would be a valuable resource for anyone seeking to understand Sabanes-Oxley's far-reaching effects on corporate governance in the United States and elsewhere." —Jesse Fried, coauthor of Pay Without Performance: The Unfulfilled Promise of Executive Compensation and Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley "The editors have assembled the latest cutting-edge research on international corporate governance by respected academics in this field. In this handbook, the editors deal with all aspects of the significant legislative changes to corporate governance regulation. It introduces the reader to the new rules that will certainly improve the reliability and the accuracy of disclosures made by corporations. The book comes at the right moment with the recent scandals such as Enron, which will educate all readers especially shareholders of corporate stock." —Komlan Sedzro, Professor of Finance, University of Quebec at Montreal "Today, corporate governance is a topic at the center of public policy debate in most industrialized countries. The range of concerns; the variety of approaches; and their tendency to converge in some areas or diverge in others (not always in the right directions) are emphatically demonstrated by these essays. There is material here of enormous interest for scholars of comparative law and economic regulation. And significantly, the presentation of essays from legal, financial, and regulatory viewpoints demonstrates the growing practical as well as theoretical utility of interdisciplinary work in this area. Professors Ali and Gregoriou are to be warmly congratulated for their skill and initiative in assembling an important publication, as well as for their own contributions to interdisciplinary scholarship." —R. P. Austin, BA, LLM (Sydney), DPhil (Oxon), Supreme Court of New South Wales "This very international collection emphasizes the economic line of descent, while including legal and socio-legal contributions. It fills a very important gap in our empirical knowledge of corporate governance. It is accessible and comprehensive and will greatly assist readers from all relevant disciplines, who are trying to discern the shape of corporate governance as a mature field." —Dimity Kingsford Smith, Professor of Law, University of New South Wales

Global Corporate Governance

Global Corporate Governance
Author: Donald H. Chew
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2009-08-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0231519974

Effective corporate governance, or the set of controls and incentives that drive top management, originates both outside and inside the firm and assures investors who hope to commit their capital. Essential when buying stocks in one's own country, effective corporate governance is even more important abroad, where information can be less reliable and investor influence (or protection) more limited. In this collection of articles from the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, more than thirty leading scholars and practitioners discuss the possibilities and limitations of global corporate finance and governance systems, whether in Europe and North America or in the emerging markets of Israel, India, Korea, and South Africa. Essays discuss the political roots of American corporate finance; the structural and financial variations between international corporations; control premiums and the effectiveness of corporate governance systems; debt, folklore, and cross-country differences in financial structures; the driving forces behind the East Asian Financial Crisis of 1997; corporate ownership and control in India, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom; financial and economic lessons of Italy's privatization program; changes in Korean corporate governance; sovereign wealth funds; and the new organization of Canadian business trusts. A special roundtable discussion addresses shareholder activism in the U.K.