A Corporate Finance Perspective on Environmental Policy

Essays on Corporate Finance Issues

Auctions in Corporate Finance ∗

This paper reviews the applications of auction theory to corporate finance. It starts with a review of the main auction theory frameworks and the major results. It then goes on to discuss how auction theory can be applied, in the context of the market for corporate control, not only to “inform” a company’s board or regulators, but also to understand some of the observed empirical evidence on ta...

Gender and Corporate Finance

Using a difference-in-differences approach around executive transitions, we examine whether men and women differ in corporate financial decisions. We find that companies with female CFOs make fewer acquisitions, and acquisitions made by female CFO firms have announcement returns approximately 2% higher than those made by male CFO firms. This evidence suggests greater scrutiny in deal-making by ...

Equilibrium corporate finance

We study a general equilibrium model with production where financial markets are incomplete. At a competitive equilibrium firms take their production and financial decisions so as to maximize their value. We show that shareholders unanimously support value maximization. Furthermore, competitive equilibria are constrained Pareto efficient. Finally the Modigliani-Miller theorem typically does not...

Essays in Corporate Finance

This dissertation studies the effects of informational asymmetries on corporate finance. Two distinct settings are considered, one empirical and one theoretical. In the first chapter, I show that strong creditor rights facilitate the financing of innovation, using a novel dataset of patent collateral portfolios. Using the random timing of court decisions as a source of exogenous variation in cr...