Download or read book Two Essays in Corporate Finance and Investment written by Joonghyuk Kim and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays in Corporate Finance and Investment written by Lin William Cong and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis consists of two essays that examine several problems in corporate finance and mechanism design. The central theme is endogenous agency conflicts and their impact on dynamic investment decisions. The first essay features auctions of assets and projects with embedded real options, and subsequent exercises of these investment options. The essay shows timing and security choice of auctions endogenously misalign incentives among agents and derives the optimal auction design and exercise strategy. The second essay studies implications of endogenous learning on irreversible investment decisions, in particular, how learning gives rise to asymmetric information between managers and shareholders in decentralized firms. Depending on the quality of the project, the optimal contract between principal and agent distorts investments in ways that has not been examined in the literature. Specifically, in Chapter 1 of the dissertation, I study how governments and corporations auction real investment options using both cash and contingent bids. Examples include sales of natural resource leases, real estate, patents and licenses, and start-up firms with growth options. I incorporate both endogenous auction initiation and post-auction option exercise into the traditional auctions framework, and show that common security bids create moral hazard because the winning bidder's real option differs from the seller's. Consequently, investment could be either accelerated or delayed depending on the security design. Strategic auction timing affects auction initiation, security ranking, equilibrium bidding, and investment; it should be considered jointly with security design and the seller's commitment level. Optimal auction design aligns investment incentives using a combination of down payment and royalty payment, but inefficiently delays sale and investment. I also characterize informal negotiations as timing and signaling games in which bidders can initiate an auction and determine the forms of bids. I show that post-auction investments are efficient and bidding equilibria are equivalent to those of cash auctions. However, in this setting, bidders always initiate the informal auctions inefficiently early. In addition, I provide suggestive evidence for model predictions using data from the leasing and exploration of oil and gas tracts, which leads to several ongoing empirical studies. Altogether, these results reconcile theory with several empirical puzzles and imply novel predictions with policy relevance. In Chapter 2, I examine learning as an important source of managerial flexibility and how it naturally induces information asymmetry in decentralized firms. Timing of learning is crucial for investment decisions, and optimal strategies involve sequential thresholds for learning and investing. Incentive contracts are needed for learning and truthful reporting. The inherent agency conflicts alter investment behavior significantly, and are costly to investors and welfare. But contracting on learning restores efficiency with low future uncertainty or sufficient liquidity. Unlike prior studies, the moral hazard of learning accelerates good projects and delays bad projects. Even the best type's investment is distorted, and only when learning is contractible can adverse selection dominate learning.

Download or read book Two Essays in Corporate Finance written by An Chee Low and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: Problems of endogeneity often cloud interpretation in corporate governance research. In this dissertation, I make use of changes in takeover laws as exogenous shocks to examine how managers react to a weakening of the corporate governance structure. In the first essay, I examine how the increased protection from hostile takeovers affects managerial incentives to change firm risk, while in the second essay I examine how firm size and firm investment behavior changes in response to the exogenous shocks. In both cases, I find that managers take actions that are beneficial to themselves but are detrimental to shareholders. Empirical evidence in the first essay show that risk-averse managers decrease firm risk in response to an exogenous increase in takeover protection in Delaware during the mid-1990s. I also find that the decrease in firm risk is concentrated among firms with low managerial equity-based incentives. Further, firms respond to the increased protection accorded by the regime shift by providing managers with greater incentives for risk-taking. Overall, the evidence supports the hypothesis that equity-based compensation can be used to align managerial interests with that of shareholders. In the second essay, I find that managers increase their firm size in response to the increased protection from hostile takeovers. The increase is predominantly among firms with low growth and high cash holdings which are exactly the firms where the agency costs of free cash flow are most costly to shareholders (Jensen, 1986). I also predict important differences in managerial empire-building through internal investments versus external acquisitions in the 1980s and 1990s based on changes in stocks and options-based incentives. Consistent with my predictions, managers prefer to empire-build through internal investments during the 1980s, while in 1990s they choose to grow more through external acquisitions.

Download or read book Two Essays on Corporate Finance written by Jie Lian and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of two essays on corporate finance. Essay one examines whether corporate governance affects firm performance after capital investments. I find that among firms with weak corporate governance, those with high abnormal capital investments have significantly lower stock performance than those with low abnormal capital investments. In addition, a significant portion of the difference in abnormal stock performance between the two subgroups occurs around earnings announcements. In contrast, the level of abnormal capital investments is not related to subsequent stock performance or earnings announcement returns at firms with strong corporate governance. These findings indicate that corporate governance structure enhances firm value by mitigating the over-investment problem. Essay two examines how insider trading activity prior to seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) is related to subsequent investment, operating, and financing decisions of the issuer. I find that SEO firms with more abnormal insider sales issue more seasoned equity, hold more cash and increase dividend payouts more. They also perform more poorly. Following the SEO, these firms also issue less equity and the effects of the SEO on their capital structures gradually reverses. These findings suggest that SEO firms with more abnormal insider sales are more likely to have overpriced stock, while those with less abnormal insider sales are more likely to have good investment opportunities. Insider trading activity prior to the SEO provides valuable information about the firm's incentives to issue seasoned equity and help to predict the real activities of the issuer following the SEO.

Download or read book Two Essays on Corporate Finance written by Sen Li and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays in Corporate Finance written by Tareque Nasser and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation contains three distinct essays in the broad area of corporate finance. The first two essays examine the role of an independent director who is also a blockholder (IDB), a potent governance mechanism, on executive compensation, and corporate financial and investment policies, respectively. The last essay examines insider trading in takeover targets. The first essay examines three issues. First, we investigate the determinants of an IDB's presence in a firm. Second, we examine the relations between IDB presence and (1) the level and structure of CEO compensation, and (2) CEO turnover-performance sensitivity. Third, we analyze if IDB presence is related to firm valuation. Our findings suggest that the presence of an independent blockholder on the board promotes better incentives and monitoring of the CEO, and consequently leads to higher firm valuation. In the second essay, we examine how the presence of an IDB affects: (1) four key financial and investment policy choices of a firm: the levels of cash holdings, dividends, investments and financial leverage, and (2) firm risk. We also examine how the market values IDB presence and changes in various policy choices associated with IDB presence in a firm. We find that firms with IDBs have significantly lower levels of cash holdings, dividend yields, repurchases, and total payout, but higher levels of capital expenditures. We also find that firms with IDBs have lower risk. Overall, IDB presence appears to reduce agency problems between managers and shareholders. The third essay brings large-sample evidence on whether the level and pattern of profitable insider trading before takeover announcements is abnormal for a broad cross-section of targets of takeovers during modern times. We find an interesting and subtle pattern in the average pre-takeover trading behavior of target insiders. While insiders reduce both their purchases and sales below normal levels, their sales reduce more than purchases, leading to an increase in net purchases. This pattern of 'passive' insider trading is confined to the six-month period before takeover announcement, holds for each insider group, for all measures of net purchases examined, and in certain sub-samples with less uncertainty about takeover completion.

Download or read book Two Essays in Corporate Finance written by Mehmet Engin Akbulut and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Two Essays on Corporate Finance written by Tae-Nyun Kim and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first essay looks at the impact of dynamic financial constraints and corporate cash holdings on investment-cash flow sensitivity. In this essay, I find that a firm increases its investment-cash flow sensitivity when it has higher level of financial constraints than previous period. In addition, I find that financially constrained firms have significantly bigger impact of corporate cash holdings on investment-cash flow sensitivity than unconstrained firms. Moreover, I show that cash holdings of a firm has a negative relationship with its investment-cash flow sensitivity if the level of its investment does not exceed internal financing sources, where the level of internal financing is defined as the sum of the previous period's cash holdings and the current period's cash flow. Lastly, I find that bank-dependent firms experience higher increase in investment-cash flow sensitivity than non-bank-dependent firms during the IT bubble burst period in the early 2000s and the subprime mortgage crisis in the late 2000s, which suggests that firms facing financial constraints increase investment-cash flow sensitivity. The second essay investigates the influence of the external shock on the speed of adjustment (SOA) toward several target ratios of firms. To look at the impact of an exogenous shock on SOA, I employ mandatory contributions (MCs) of defined benefit (DB) pension plans as a measure of the external shock, and I find a negative impact of the exogenous shock on the level of leverage and SOA toward target leverage. This result is robust when including firm and year fixed effects, when using GMM or long differencing estimation to reduce the biases in estimation, and when assuming that mandatory contributions are endogenously determined. The negative impact of MCs on SOA is especially bigger for firms which have volatile historical leverage or stronger governance structure. Though the total liability level of DB pension plans has a negative impact on both the level of leverage and SOA toward target leverage, it becomes statistically insignificant or trivial in magnitude after including firm fixed effects and year dummies in the model. When examining the impact of MCs on SOA toward other target ratios of firms, I find a negative impact of MCs on SOA toward the target investment level.

Download or read book Two Essays in Corporate Finance written by Daniel Newton Deli and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Two Essays in Corporate Finance written by Gauri W. Karve and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis presents two essays that link firm behavior to constraints they face while raising capital in external markets. The first. essay features a theoretical model that establishes the importance of speculative motive and firm borrowing capacity, as reflected by asset tangibility, on cash management decisions of financially-constrained firms. The study concludes that for constrained firms, cash varies positively with asset intangibility and likelihood of future profitable investment, and negatively with future cash flows; while these relationships are imperceptible for unconstrained firms. The model further introduces a risk-averse firm owner and proves that ceteris paribus, with an increase in his degree of risk aversion, the owners investment choice conforms with theory and he invests in a profitable project with certain payoff over a higher-yielding but uncertain future project. This essay is the first study to investigate the effects of future stochastic investment opportunity, asset tangibility and risk aversion exclusively on rash holdings of constrained firms.

Download or read book Two Essays in Corporate Finance written by YoungHa Ki and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Two Essays in Corporate Finance written by Emmanuel Alanis Hernandez and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this dissertation, we answer two research question in corporate finance. In the first essay, "A New Benchmark: Relative Performance Evaluation with Total Returns", we revisit the question of relative performance evaluation (RPE) in executive compensation. While previous literature has commonly rejected the use of RPE when using equity returns as performance measure, we argue that the total return of the firm is a preferable metric in RPE regressions since the exogenous common shocks analyzed in extant theory occur at the asset level. Further, it is plausible that executives are concerned about the total value of the firm since shareholders bear most of the brunt of the agency cost of other stakeholders and executives can hold nontrivial amounts of debt-like instruments. We find strong evidence in support of RPE in the compensation of top executives. In addition, we cannot reject that the magnitude of RPE used in the average contract is optimal. Overall, this essay contributes to the ongoing debate about the efficiency of executive pay. In the second essay, "Shareholder Bargaining Power, Debt Overhang, and Investment", we analyze how shareholder bargaining power affects the underinvestment problem caused by debt overhang. Using a dynamic model of strategic bargaining between equity and debt holders following default, we relate firm-specific characteristics, such as the shareholder and bondholder ownership concentration, to debt overhang and investment. Consistent with our predictions, we find expected liquidation values and bondholder ownership concentration enhance the underinvestment effect of debt overhang, while shareholder ownership concentration mitigates it. Our results highlight how shareholder bargaining power in default can affect the underinvestment problem caused by debt overhang. The electronic version of this dissertation is accessible from http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/155471

Download or read book Essays in Corporate Finance written by Bruno d Laranjeira and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis presents two essays in Corporate Finance. In the first essay, I use the August 2007 crisis episode to gauge the effect of financial contracting on real firm behavior. I identify heterogeneity in financial contracting at the onset of the crisis by exploiting ex-ante variation in long-term debt maturity structure. Using a difference-in-differences matching estimator approach, I find that firms whose long-term debt was largely maturing right after the third quarter of 2007 cut their investment-to-capital ratio by 2.5 percentage points more (on a quarterly basis) than otherwise similar firms whose debt was scheduled to mature after 2008. This drop in investment is statistically and economically significant, representing one-third of pre-crisis investment levels. A number of falsification and placebo tests suggest that my inferences are not confounded with other factors. For example, in the absence of a credit contraction, the maturity composition of long-term debt has no effect on investment. Moreover, long-term debt maturity composition had no impact on investment during the crisis for firms for which long-term debt was not a major source of funding. Our analysis highlights the importance of debt maturity for corporate financial policy. More than showing a general association between credit markets and real activity, my analysis shows how the credit channel operates through a specific feature of financial contracting. In the second essay, I analyze how institutional investors choose which Initial Public Offering to invest. Using a sample of IPOs from 1980 to 2004, I show that the reputation of the lead underwriter is the most significant variable in this decision process. Using Carter-Manaster rankings of underwriter reputation, I report that a one point increase in the reputation ranking leads to a 2% increase in institutional investors` holding. Moreover, I test hypotheses about what kind of certification the underwriter is providing. I provide evidence that underwriters certify un-measurable characteristics, in contrast to measurable characteristics, such as those provided in the financial statements of the issuer.

Download or read book Essays on Corporate Finance and Investment written by Jue Wang (PhD) and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this dissertation, I focus on a range of topics in corporate finance and investments.

Download or read book Two Essays in Corporate Finance written by Ninghua Zhong and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Corporate Finance and Investment written by Vladimir Smirnov and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Investments and Corporate Finance written by Marc Antony Via and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three essays on investments and corporate finance. The first essay is an investment article focused on factors affecting market makers in the trading of securities, the second essay is a corporate finance article which empirically tests theories of what factors motivate executives to innovate, while the third essay is a corporate finance article which empirically tests theories of why returns are higher in firms with high organization capital investments. For the first essay, I evaluate the shift in the duration of legal insider trading and asymmetric information after Sarbanes Oxley, and find that market makers can identify asymmetric trading via the PIN measure and abnormal volumes and adjust spreads accordingly. This study is the first to consider the duration and accuracy of asymmetric trading and their effects on bid ask spreads. The second essay considers executive incentives to innovate based on firm governance and compensation policies. Basically it seeks to empirically test the theoretical predictions of Manso (2011). Manso theorizes that the individual choice of management to innovate is motivated by a firm tolerance for early failure, as innovations often struggle along their development paths. Ultimately, I find empirical support for many of the predictions of Manso. The third essay addresses how the threat of talented employee departure from firms affects firm risk. Eisfeldt and Papanikoloau (2013) introduced the idea that the threat of the loss of key talent may increase risk for firms with high levels of organization capital. However, they do not provide direct evidence that this risk increase is due to this employment threat, and other literature has suggested that SG & A risk is from management inability or unwillingness to reduce costs. I add to this debate by testing the movement of inventors between firms, and find strong support for the theories of Eisfeldt and Papanikolaou (2013).