The dissertation consists of two chapters on measuring firms technological profile. Patent data can be grouped into two primary generations. The first generation lead by the work of Schmookler (1966), Scherer (1982), and Griliches (1984), and the second generation led by Trajtenberg, Jaffe, and Henderson (1997) and Kogan et al. (2016). When combined, both generations data spans from nearly 1926-2010 and has made a meaningful impact on innovation research. In the first chapter, I propose a third generation of patent data. The third generation of patent data has two distinct contributions. First, it extends patent-firm ownership information beyond 2010 to 2016. The new dataset uses the established connections of previous datasets and builds on that information with additional data on firm names gathered from EDGAR. Second, it takes advantage of the information contained in the text of patents using text analysis. Using text analysis allows for greater flexibility over traditional measures. The second chapter investigates how ownership structure affects firm value. The previous literature has assumed more innovation is better, meaning the more innovation a business creates; the better off it is in the long-run. However, not all innovations are created equal. We contribute to the literature by investigating how institutional investors change future innovation, not in quantity, but diversity. Using several unique measures of technological diversification created from firm-level patent data, we show that institutional investors increase the focus on a firm’s future innovation. Our results are robust to the classification scheme. Ultimately, our results indicate institutional investors create value by encouraging firms to build on prior knowledge.

<p>Denna uppsats bygger på en kvantitativ studie där svenska börsnoterade företag undersöks. Syftet med uppsatsen är att ta reda på i vilken utsträckning olika investeringsmetoder används och att undersöka vilka variabler som påverkar användningen av dessa metoder. Vårt syfte är även att undersöka hur förändringen i användandet av metoderna över tiden ser ut bland svenska börsnoterade företag. Vi fokuserar på att undersöka huruvida företag blivit mer sofistikerade i sina investeringsbeslut.</p><p>I studien har statistiska undersökningar gjorts baserade på en enkätundersökning. Både så kallade t-test och chi-2 test har använts för att finna signifikanta skillnader i användandet av olika metoder bland olika företagsgrupper. Enkäten skickades till alla 253 börsnoterade företag i Sverige år 2008 varav 87 svarade, vilket gav en svarsfrekvens på 34 %.</p><p>Resultatet presenteras och jämförs med liknande studier som gjorts på amerikanska och europeiska företag för att påvisa skillnader och liknelser med USA och Europa. Genom att jämföra med en identisk studie från år 2004 har vi haft möjlighet att observera förändringar i det ansedda användandet av investeringsmetoder mellan år 2004 och 2008. De observerade förändringarna har sedan analyserats för att se om svenska börsnoterade företag blivit mer sofistikerade i sina investeringsbeslut.</p><p>Våra resultat visar att svenska börsnoterade företag generellt sett överger investeringsmetoder som anses osofistikerade medan mer sofistikerade investeringsmetoder tenderar att användas i högre utsträckning. Förändringen i användandet av värderingsmetoder visar att osofistikerade metoder som internräntemetoden, återbetalningstidsmetoden och den redovisningsmässiga avkastningsmetoden minskat i användning. Användandet av metoden där företagen lyssnar till investerarnas avkastningskrav vid estimeringar av kostnaden för eget kapital, är den metod där det skett kraftigast minskning mellan 2004 och 2008, vilket går i linje med att företag tenderar att överge osofistikerade metoder. Svenska börsnoterade företag tenderar även att i högre utsträckning använda mer sofistikerade diskonteringsräntor vid investeringar utomlands 2008 jämfört med 2004 och dessutom tenderar företagen att justera för riskfaktorer i högre utsträckning.</p> / <p>This thesis predicates on a quantitative survey of listed firms in Sweden. The purpose of this thesis is to find out in which extent firms use investment methods and to investigate how the different variables (firm characteristics) affect the usage of the methods. Furthermore, we examine the change of the usage during a time period. We have focused at investigating whether firms have become more sophisticated in their investment decisions.</p><p>In this study a statistical research is made through t-tests and chi-square tests based on a questionnaire in order to find significant differences in the usage of different methods among the different firm characteristics. The questionnaire was sent to all 253 listed firms in Sweden year 2008, where 87 CFOs responded to the survey which gave the response rate of 34%.</p><p>We present and compare the results to similar surveys based on American and European firms to demonstrate differences and similarities to US and Europe. By comparing our results to an identical study from 2004 we can observe differences in the usage of investment methods between year 2004 and 2008. Later on we have analysed the disparities we discovered, to see whether the Swedish listed firms have become more sophisticated in their investment decisions.</p><p>Overall, our results show that Swedish listed firms are abandoning methods that are considered as unsophisticated and that methods that are considered as sophisticated tend to be used more frequently. The difference in the usage of valuation methods shows that unsophisticated methods like internal rate of return, payback method and the accounting rate of return have decreased in usage. Among cost of equity estimations, asking the investors about their required return is a decreasingly used method, indicating firms have an increased tendency to go along with the sophisticated development. Swedish listed firms are also showing that they are using more sophisticated discount rates when investing abroad and furthermore they tend to adjust for risk factors more frequently 2008 compared to 2004.</p>

Denna uppsats bygger på en kvantitativ studie där svenska börsnoterade företag undersöks. Syftet med uppsatsen är att ta reda på i vilken utsträckning olika investeringsmetoder används och att undersöka vilka variabler som påverkar användningen av dessa metoder. Vårt syfte är även att undersöka hur förändringen i användandet av metoderna över tiden ser ut bland svenska börsnoterade företag. Vi fokuserar på att undersöka huruvida företag blivit mer sofistikerade i sina investeringsbeslut. I studien har statistiska undersökningar gjorts baserade på en enkätundersökning. Både så kallade t-test och chi-2 test har använts för att finna signifikanta skillnader i användandet av olika metoder bland olika företagsgrupper. Enkäten skickades till alla 253 börsnoterade företag i Sverige år 2008 varav 87 svarade, vilket gav en svarsfrekvens på 34 %. Resultatet presenteras och jämförs med liknande studier som gjorts på amerikanska och europeiska företag för att påvisa skillnader och liknelser med USA och Europa. Genom att jämföra med en identisk studie från år 2004 har vi haft möjlighet att observera förändringar i det ansedda användandet av investeringsmetoder mellan år 2004 och 2008. De observerade förändringarna har sedan analyserats för att se om svenska börsnoterade företag blivit mer sofistikerade i sina investeringsbeslut. Våra resultat visar att svenska börsnoterade företag generellt sett överger investeringsmetoder som anses osofistikerade medan mer sofistikerade investeringsmetoder tenderar att användas i högre utsträckning. Förändringen i användandet av värderingsmetoder visar att osofistikerade metoder som internräntemetoden, återbetalningstidsmetoden och den redovisningsmässiga avkastningsmetoden minskat i användning. Användandet av metoden där företagen lyssnar till investerarnas avkastningskrav vid estimeringar av kostnaden för eget kapital, är den metod där det skett kraftigast minskning mellan 2004 och 2008, vilket går i linje med att företag tenderar att överge osofistikerade metoder. Svenska börsnoterade företag tenderar även att i högre utsträckning använda mer sofistikerade diskonteringsräntor vid investeringar utomlands 2008 jämfört med 2004 och dessutom tenderar företagen att justera för riskfaktorer i högre utsträckning. / This thesis predicates on a quantitative survey of listed firms in Sweden. The purpose of this thesis is to find out in which extent firms use investment methods and to investigate how the different variables (firm characteristics) affect the usage of the methods. Furthermore, we examine the change of the usage during a time period. We have focused at investigating whether firms have become more sophisticated in their investment decisions. In this study a statistical research is made through t-tests and chi-square tests based on a questionnaire in order to find significant differences in the usage of different methods among the different firm characteristics. The questionnaire was sent to all 253 listed firms in Sweden year 2008, where 87 CFOs responded to the survey which gave the response rate of 34%. We present and compare the results to similar surveys based on American and European firms to demonstrate differences and similarities to US and Europe. By comparing our results to an identical study from 2004 we can observe differences in the usage of investment methods between year 2004 and 2008. Later on we have analysed the disparities we discovered, to see whether the Swedish listed firms have become more sophisticated in their investment decisions. Overall, our results show that Swedish listed firms are abandoning methods that are considered as unsophisticated and that methods that are considered as sophisticated tend to be used more frequently. The difference in the usage of valuation methods shows that unsophisticated methods like internal rate of return, payback method and the accounting rate of return have decreased in usage. Among cost of equity estimations, asking the investors about their required return is a decreasingly used method, indicating firms have an increased tendency to go along with the sophisticated development. Swedish listed firms are also showing that they are using more sophisticated discount rates when investing abroad and furthermore they tend to adjust for risk factors more frequently 2008 compared to 2004.

This dissertation work provides a kaleidoscope of alternative empirical estimation techniques while illuminating and challenging conventional approaches and established findings in the Corporate Finance literature. In particular, the observed „conglomerate discount“ and the effect of diversication and concentrated ownership on firm value are revisited in the course of my cumulated doctoral thesis. In doing so, the main emphasis lies on the inference of causation in the presence of endogeneity concerns, namely by considering potential distortions caused by unobserved heterogeneity, reverse causality or non-random self-selection.:1 A Corporate Finance Application of the Oaxaca-Blinder De-composition: Causes of the Diversification Discount 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Corporate diversi_cation and its agency-related costs 1.3 The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition as an approach to explaining the excess value gap 1.3.1 Pooled sample OLS decomposition 1.3.2 The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition 1.4 Sample selection and description 1.4.1 Sample selection and variables 1.4.2 Sample description 1.5 Empirical analysis and discussion 1.5.1 Basic results 1.5.2 Robustness tests 1.6 Conclusion 1.7 Tables 1.8 References 1.9 Appendix 2 A Paradoxon of Policy Intervention: The Case of the German Tax Reduction Act 2.1 Introduction 2.2 The Tax Reduction Act of 2000 2.3 Theoretical Framework 2.3.1 Investor View 2.3.2 Investee View 2.4 Data and Descriptives 2.4.1 Sample 2.4.2 Summary Statistics 2.4.3 Identification Strategy 2.5 Estimation Framework 2.5.1 The Effect of the Tax Reform on Ownership Concentration and Firm Value 2.5.2 The Effect of Ownership Concentration on Firm Value 2.6 Conclusion and Discussion 2.7 Tables 2.8 Appendix 2.9 References 3 Good Matches Last Longer { Unobserved Heterogeneity across Firm-Owner Matches 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Estimation Framework 3.2.1 Empirical Model 3.2.2 Error Decomposition 3.2.3 The OLS Estimator 3.2.4 The Instrumental Variable (IV)-Approach 3.2.5 Prediction of Bias Direction and Relevance 3.3 Data and Sample Description 3.3.1 Sample 3.3.2 Summary Statistics 3.4 Results 3.4.1 Cumulative Effect of Ownership Concentration 3.4.2 Cumulative Effect of Ownership Concentration by Owner Types 3.5 Discussion and Conclusion 3.6 Tables 3.7 Appendix 3.8 References 4 About estimating gains from diversification and why firms self-select 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Modelling gains from diversification 4.2.1 Potential outcomes and switching regressions 4.2.2 Expected firm values and selection bias 4.2.3 Diversification gains and selection bias 4.3 Modelling selection into diversification 4.3.1 Selection according to highest expected outcome 4.3.2 Selection on expected gains 4.4 Sample selection and descriptives 4.4.1 Sample selection and excess value measure 4.4.2 Distribution of firm characteristics 4.5 Results 4.5.1 OLS and IV estimation 4.5.2 Endogenous switching regression 4.6 Conclusion 4.7 Tables 4.8 References

This thesis utilises event studies to measure the impact of League of Legends Esports s teams on the share prices of their main sponsors and parent company, namely, the CJ Corporation, Korean Air, the Kt Corporation, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and SK Telecom. Hypothetically, the success of a team, the acquisition of a major player or the beginning of a sponsorship would have a positive effect on the corporation reflected in an increase in the firm’s daily share price returns. Results showed that this was indeed true especially for a team’s success in large competitions such as the SBENU Summer Championships 2015 and the annual World Finals. As such, corporations can benefit from increasing their investments into the scene as a result of the quantifiable win-win scenario apparent for both firm and team.

This work focuses on the factors influencing the accessibility of credit lines for the companies in the Czech Republic. Its methodology follows the respected works written in the field of credit markets or in the field of econometrical methods suitable for the estimation of such markets. The main econometrical tool of this work is the Maximum Likelihood Estimation. Dependent variable is always the percentage change of the total volume of corporate loans and the independent variables are the percentage changes of different macroeconomic indicators. This work brings key findings important for the understanding the of the Czech corporate credit market. JEL Classification C32, C51, E40, E41, G10, G20, G21 Keywords Corporate Loans, Credit, Credit Lines, Credit Market, Credit Supply, Czech Banking Sector, Demand for Credit, Loans Author's e-mail pavelhanak@seznam.cz Supervisor's e-mail petr.gapko@seznam.cz

In essay one, my primary objective is to see the sensitivity of foreign exchange rate risk on firm performance in US manufacturing industry and examine if the hedging help reduce the foreign exchange rate risk. I am particularly interested in manufacturing industry because of the nature of business operation of manufacturing firms. Manufacturing firms in US are not only exposed to foreign exchange fluctuation from sales and revenue but also are exposed to foreign exchange rate risk for procurement, placement and investment. I find that the firms with extreme foreign exchange rate risk exposure exhibit lower daily return and firms with very low foreign exchange rate risk exhibit higher daily return using the portfolio approach. I also find that the firms that hedge has lower foreign exchange rate exposure compared to firms that don’t hedge. The coefficient for hedge is negative and statistically significant. In essay two, I investigate the effect of executive compensation on exchange rate risk in US manufacturing industry. There is a large theoretical and empirical interest on executive compensation using agency framework that investigates the conflict of interest between shareholders and corporate executives. That interest has been largely aligned with the use of managerial performance dependent on observable measures of firm performance. Since US manufacturing firm is largely exposed to foreign exchange transactions by design, I investigate if the value of in-the-money unexercised vested executive stock option has any impact on foreign exchange rate exposure. I investigate if the value of in-the-money unexercised unvested executive stock option has any impact on executive stock option. Using pooled OLS, fixed effect panel data and random effect panel data, I find that in all 3 model value of in-the-money unexercised vested executive stock option has negative coefficient and is statistically significant. At the same time in all 3 models the value of in-the-money unexercised unvested executive stock option is positive and is statistically significant.

In chapter 1, I provide evidence against the claim in the conventional literature on corporate diversification discount that the diversification effect is homogeneous across the industries. I argue that the responsiveness of consumer demand to the changing economic conditions or the product demand sensitivity is an important characteristic of the industries that should be considered to have a more complete understanding of the issue of underperformance of diversified firms compared to single-segment firms. Differentiating industries based on the measure of product demand sensitivity, I show that the diversification effects are not to be homogeneous across the industries. Much of the value destroying effect from the diversification gets reduced when industry experiences any shock or increase in the sensitivity of demand. It implies a better shock observing capacity of diversified firms and a source of premium that conglomerates can enjoy due to their diversified operations during the periods of the increase of sensitivity of product demand. Our result is robust to difference specification and difference measure of sensitivity. In chapter 2, I include organizational forms as industrial and global diversification, and geographic dispersion in the empirical framework to find out which types of diversification do matter for the cost of bank loans. I find that firms which are only globally diversified, neither industrially diversified nor geographically dispersed, experience higher cost of bank loans. The other types of firms incurring higher cost of bank debt are the firms which are only geographically dispersed, and the firms which are diversified in all three ways with the combination of geographic, global, and industrial diversification. Examining the effects of organizational forms on the non-price loan terms, I observe that covenant restrictions are generally higher for the combination of diversified firms which are either both geographically dispersed and industrially diversified, or geographically dispersed and globally diversified.

Denna studie bidrar med kunskap kring kapitalbudgetering i SMEs och de faktorer som styr denna. Tidigare studier har funnit att faktorer som exempelvis storlek, utbildningsbakgrund, utbildningsnivå och bransch haft en inverkan på kapitalbudgetering. Främst är det stora företag i förhållande till SMEs som undersökts i tidigare studier, vilket gör det intressant att undersöka SMEs. Studien har baserats på primärdata från 104 svenska SMEs och har undersökt relationen mellan kapitalbudgetering och faktorer som företagets karaktärsdrag, utövarens karaktärsdrag och om företagen möter kapitalrestriktioner. Multipel regression har använts för att undersöka om det föreligger samband mellan faktorerna och kapitalbudgeteringen i SMEs. Studien fann signifikanta samband mellan utövarens ålder, högskoleutbildning samt yrkeserfarenhet och användandet av osofistikerade kapitalbudgeteringsmetoder.

[pt] O caráter dinâmico dos aspectos econômicos do mundo atual, somado à grande incerteza inerente às decisões futuras, faz com que o conceito de análise de investimentos esteja sofrendo consideráveis alterações. Cada vez mais é observada uma necessidade de inclusão de uma margem de flexibilidade gerencial nos critérios de avaliação de projetos. Justamente por isto, vários autores vêm criticando o tradicional método de análise, baseado no fluxo de caixa descontado (FCD). Ao mesmo tempo, vêm sendo destacadas as vantagens da utilização da teoria das Opções Reais, caracterizada justamente por incluir este tão importante elemento de flexibilidade gerencial, capaz de garantir uma adaptabilidade estratégica aos tomadores de decisão. Dentre os projetos que mais precisam deste novo critério de avaliação estão aqueles relacionados a investimentos na área de petróleo. Isto porque esta é uma área caracterizada por elevada incerteza e que demanda vultosas quantias de investimento, requerendo assim, uma análise mais cuidadosa. Dentro do tema Opções Reais em petróleo, Dias (2005) desenvolveu dois modelos de análise: o Business e o Rigid Cash Flow. A presente dissertação busca fazer uma comparação entre estes dois modelos e tirar conclusões a respeito da melhor decisão de investimento, tanto no que diz respeito ao melhor momento de se investir - a questão do timing - quanto ao que diz respeito à valoração do projeto em si. Para a realização desta análise comparativa, são desenvolvidos gráficos em Excel, com resultados gerados por um programa desenvolvido em VBA (Visual Basic for Aplications). / [en] Nowadays, world´s economic issues are characterized by dynamism and strong uncertainties, especially in questions related to future decisions. As a consequence of this, the theory of investment analysis has been changing a lot. More and more it has been observed a growing necessity to include the concept of managerial flexibility in project valuation. Plenty of authors criticize the currently used investment analysis method, mainly represented by the discounted cash flow. Besides, several researches have been carried out to analyze the advantages of using the Real Options theory, which is characterized exactly by including this managerial flexibility, so important to the investment and project studies. Managerial flexibility is important exactly because it is capable to guarantee strategic adaptability to the decision makers. Among the projects that need most this new valuation criterion, it is important to mention those related to petroleum investments, due to its complexity and to the fact that petroleum projects demand voluminous sums of investment, requiring therefore, a more detailed and careful analysis. Dias (2005), in his studies about Real Option theory in petroleum area, has developed two analysis models: Business and Rigid Cash Flow. The main proposal of this dissertation is to compare these two models and to draw some conclusions about the best investment decision, regarding not only the best moment to invest - timing decisions - but also the valuation projects issues. To make this comparative analysis, some graphs have been developed in Excel. The data used to construct such graphs were generated by a VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) program, also developed by Dias (2005).