This paper studies companies that have a controlling shareholder. In particular, it examines the relationship between firm performance and its controlling shareholder’s personal loan. We present a model to identify two effects of a personal loan that is secured by stocks. The loan can be beneficial ex ante, because it relaxes the wealth constraint of controlling shareholders and allows firms to...

This paper examines the hypothesis that religious firms are more socially responsible. By utilizing a novel measure of religiosity reflects firm-level adherence to Christian values, we find religiousness is positively associated with CSR engagement large US after controlling for county-level and various firm characteristics. The results indicate have higher social environmental responsibility s...

ing further to make this discussion more relevant to an industrial economy, the purpose of the bank is to warehouse risks that only it can manage, while financing with a capital structure that gives its management credibility. This means that if some risks become more vanilla and capable of being offloaded to the rest of the financial sector, the banking system will offload them and replace the...

This paper estimates the implied cost of equity for Canadian and U.S. firms using a methodology based on the dividend discount model and utilizing firms’ current stock price and analysts’ forecasted earnings. We find that firm size and firm stock liquidity are negatively related to cost of equity, while greater firm financial leverage and greater dispersion in analysts’ earnings forecasts are a...

Websites have become an essential component in firms’ IT portfolios. Many business processes require website functionalities to operate smoothly. This study aims at investigating how firm website affects cost of equity, an important factor in firm valuation. We conducted a cross-sectional regression using a unique dataset consisting of 3,312 firm websites operated by US public firms. Firm websi...

While much attention has been paid to company founders, very little is known regarding the first set of non-founder employees who join high-growth startups ("early employees"). This paper explores the wage differential between venture capital-backed startups and established firms given that the two firm types compete for talent. Using data on graduating college students from MIT, I find that VC...

Almond red leaf blotch is the most important fungal disease that is caused by the fungus Polystigma amygdalinum. Symptoms depending on the cultivar almond trees can be seen almost all year. In this study the effect of 5 fungicides (Copper oxychloride  2000 µg/ml, Bordofix 2000 µg/ml, Mancozeb 200 µg/ml, Bordo Compound 10000 µg/ml, Triforin 300 µg/ml with rep.control) was examined in a randomize...

It has been argued that the most likely explanation for the result that earnings rise with firm size is that large firms employ high-ability individuals. In this paper we use matched employer-employee panel data from Ghana and Kenya and test for firm size effects in earnings regressions whilst controlling for unobserved ability in the form of worker fixed effects. For both countries we obtain a...

Blockholder ownership may increase firm value because of incentive alignment or lower it because of expropriation of minority investors. Dividend policy provides a way to distinguish between the two effects since large owners may prefer low dividends if they derive private benefits from controlling firms, while minority investors may prefer high dividends that benefit all shareholders. I examin...