This research is the result of the author’s quest to answer the question whether Corporate Governance is effective in Emerging Markets. Literature on Corporate Governance in the emerging markets of Latin America is limited mostly due to the relatively slower development of capital markets and the late adoption of corporate governance principles. Corporate Governance laws, which largely follow Sarbanes Oxley guidelines, were published and implemented in the mid 00´s and no research has checked their impact on corporate value in Latin America. This research reports compromises two empirical projects. The first project focused on the relationship between boards of directors attributes such size and composition, Corporate Governance law and firm value for Colombia. The second project focused on another Corporate Governance variable, CEO Duality and tested whether it has had any impact in Mexico. This second project also studied whether board attributes such as size and composition and Corporate Governance law were related to firm value. Based on the listed companies from Colombia and Mexico for the years 2001 to 2012 the author found no relationship between board size or composition and firm value. Results from Mexico, where CEO duality is allowed showed that it has no relationship with firm value. These results do not support or contradict either Agency theory or stewardship theory. Results on the impact of the adoption of a Corporate Governance law in firm value are mixed. Results for Colombia contradict previous literature by reporting a positive relationship between Corporate Governance laws and firm results while results from Mexico support previous research by reporting no relationship between these variables. This research is valuable for regulators and policy makers in their quest to assess the impact of the adoption of Corporate Governance laws in emerging markets. . Since effective Corporate Governance is important in easier access to financing it is important for shareholders to know which Corporate Governance mechanisms are positively related to firm value. Similarly, it is also important for investors (both foreign and local) in assessing the risk for equity investments in Colombia and Mexico.

I denna studie lyfter vi fram VD relativa ersättning i förhållande till resterande koncernledning. Studiens syfte är att analysera effekterna av en stark VD genom att undersöka sambandet mellan VD:s andel ersättning och företagets resultat vad gäller värde och lönsamhet. Studien bygger på teorier som agentteorin, stewardshipteorin, tournamentteorin och cateringteorin. För att besvara frågan om samband existerar har en kvantitativ metod använts. Data har sedan analyserats med hjälp av regressionsanalyser för att identifiera samband. Studien inkluderar företag listade på Stockholmbörsens Large Cap lista. Resultatet visar på ett positivt samband mellan VD:s andel ersättning i förhållande till resterande koncernledning och företagets lönsamhet mätt i avkastningen på totalt kapital. Inget signifikant samband mellan VD:s relativa ersättning och företagets värde påträffas. Dessa resultat indikerar att det inte förekommer agentproblem mellan VD och ägarna i dessa företag. En stor andel ersättning till VD kan ge högre lönsamhet vilket kan stödja tournament- och stewardshipteorin. / This study aims to highlight the CEO:s relative importance in relation to the other top executives. The study aims to analyse the impact of a strong CEO by examine the relationship between the CEO:s relative compensation and the company's performance. The study is based on the principal agent theory, stewardship theory, tournament theory and catering theory. A quantitative method is used to analyse the relationship between a strong CEO and company´s performance. The data is analysed by a multiple regression to identify associations. The population consist of companies listed on the Stockholms OMX Large Cap list. We find a positive relation between the CEO:s relative compensation and the company´s profitability by return on assets. No significant correlation between CEO:s relative compensation and the company´s performance by market to book is detected. The result indicate that no agency problem exist between the CEO and these companies, but a large proportion of compensation to CEO can provide greater profitability and can support the tournament and stewardship theory.

In Verbal Behavior, Skinner (1957) suggested that each verbal operant has independent response functions, in which acquiring one does not automatically result in the other, unless transfer between the verbal operants is directly trained. Although several researchers have shown that mands and tacts are functionally independent, more recent research has demonstrated that mands may emerge following tact training. However, this research has not clarified the influence of establishing operations on the emergence of pure mands following tact training. Therefore, the present study investigated the effects of tact training on the acquisition of impure and pure mands in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) when conditioned establishing operations (CEO) were manipulated during mand probes. Three children diagnosed with ASD were taught to tact the utensils needed to consume their preferred edibles and then were assessed on their ability to mand for those utensils during CEO absent versus CEO present pure mand probes using a multiple baseline design across participants. It was hypothesized that children would be able to mand for the missing utensils needed to consume their preferred edibles only when the food items were present (CEO present, pure mand probes), but not when they were absent (CEO absent, pure mand probes). Results showed that responses taught as tacts failed to transfer to mand responses until direct training was implemented for two of the three participants. However, once a mand response was learned, all participants exhibited the mand in the CEO present condition but not in the CEO absent condition.

In the first essay, we examine the link between CEOs political ideology - conservatism - and their firms' investment decisions. We focus on the effect of CEO conservatism on M&A decisions. Our evidence indicates that politically conservative CEOs are less likely to engage in M&A activities. When they do undertake acquisitions, their firms are more likely to use cash as the method of payment, and the target firms are more likely to be public firms and to be from the same industry. Conditional on the merger, CEO conservatism appears to have a significantly positive impact on long-run firm valuation. However, we find no evidence that conservative CEOs create value in the short run. All our results hold after controlling for CEO overconfidence. In the second essay, we investigate the impact of difference in local political ideologies between acquirers and targets on the likelihood of deal completion and announcement returns over the period of 1981-2009. We posit that increase in political ideology distance between acquirer and target leads to greater risks/costs associated with the integration process. This increase in distance is less likely to allow for the completion of deals and elicit less favorable market response to merger announcements. We find that when political ideology distance between acquirer and target in a merger are minimal, deals are more likely to be completed. We also find that acquirer which are politically proximate to their targets earn significantly higher returns than distant acquirers. After controlling for the geographic effect and other determinants of announcement returns, the political ideology effect still exists. Overall, the evidence suggests that corporate political ideology plays an important role in completing deals and determining announcement returns.

The current research emerged in response to recent alerts of increasing organisational safety failures in New Zealand’s high risk industries. It was theorized that safety climate may be largely determined by the quality of safety-centered leadership under which an organisation operates. The study utilized reports of organisational safety prosecutions within New Zealand to develop a quasi-experimental design which compared persecuted and non-prosecuted company’s leaders on measures of ethical values, moral philosophy, social responsibility, corporate psychopathy, and leadership style. Issues of response rate inherent to the study design were encountered during data collection, and no significant between group differences consistent with the study predictions were found. Theoretical and practical interpretations are made in light of the results, suggesting that dynamics within group-decision processes and the top governing structure of companies may be significant factors in affecting leader safety performances within these industries.

This dissertation presents three essays. The first essay finds that the household risky ratio, the ratio of high risk assets over low risk assets directly owned by households, is a strong negative predictor of the equity premium on the US stock market. The predictability is robust to definition of the asset classes, first versus second half of sample, and the finite-sample bias of Stambaugh (1999). The predictability is stronger than, and not subsumed by popular predictors like price-earnings ratios, yield spread, equity share of issues, or consumption-wealth ratios. The main predictive power is decomposed into three similar parts: 1) the household tilt of risky assets, which is novel and generally orthogonal to known predictors; 2) a valuation ratio component; and 3) an issuance component of high risk versus low risk assets. / Economics

This thesis will identify what career paths, advanced degrees, and supportive industries best enable engineers and other highly technical professionals to move past middle management layers into executive leadership. Specific questions to be addressed include: 1. Which technical degrees most often lead to CEO appointments? 2. Which industries offer the most advancement opportunities for technical degree graduates? 3. Which advanced degrees are most useful for ascension into CEO ranks? This research is specifically geared to extend the key learnings of the University of Texas at Austin Executive Engineering Management curriculum giving the reader foresight into what executive career paths are available for those with technical degrees. / text

June 22, 1918, Alonzo Sergent fell asleep while conducting a train that plowed into another train killing 86 passengers and injuring another 187. 17 days later, July 9, 1918, two passenger trains collided head on in what became known as The Great Train Wreck of 1918, killing 101 people and injuring 171 people. The investigations and analysis of failure in both accidents can be attributed to a single person. During this month, the single person failed to operate the company’s train properly, which lead to a colossal disaster which affected numerous lives, loss of business revenue, loss of credibility, and had a huge social impact. Similar to an analysis of a colossal train wreck, this report focuses on the complexities behind colossal business failures, analyzes the reasons for failure and the role of the CEO, and proposes recommendations that can be used to guard future businesses against colossal failure. / text

This dissertation consists of two essays on corporate finance. The first essay investigates the relationship between dual-class shares and firm’s risk-taking. While costs associated with dual-class shares are widely documented, the benefits are seldom studied in the literature. We attempt to fill this gap and find that dual-class firms tend to have fewer business segments, higher volatilities in their cash flows, earnings, and investment opportunities compared to propensity-matched single-class firms. Business segments within a dual-class firm are also more positively correlated in their cash flows, earnings, or investment opportunities than those in single-class firms. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that dual-class shares can potentially shield insiders from short-term market pressure so they can focus on riskier projects to enhance long-term shareholder value. To provide a possible channel through which dual-class firms can increase corporate risk-taking, we examine one of the most important corporate investment decisions: mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Dual-class firms are more likely to engage in M&As, especially nondiversifying M&As. Corporate risks increase following M&As, and the increase is more for dual-class firms than for single-class firms. The second essay shows how CEO skills affect operating performance using a sample of 109 spin-offs from 1994 to 2009. Since a variety of studies indicate that firms in need of external financing are more likely to engage in spin-offs, we hypothesize that parent firms prefer to appoint financial experts as CEOs at spun-off units around spin-off transactions. We find that appointing spun-off unit CEOs with financial expertise brings significant and positive wealth effects. Furthermore, the CEOs with financial expertise significantly improve firms’ access to capital markets and subsequent operating performance. Conversely, we do not observe positive wealth effects at the spin-off announcement or improved operating performance following spin-offs when parent firms decide to assign non-financial experts as spun-off unit CEOs.

This study primarily investigates the determinants of CEO membership of New Zealand (NZ) boards, and the effect of CEO board membership on firm performance, for publicly-listed NZ firms between 1997 to 2008. The project is conducted using a unique hand-collected panel dataset containing information about CEO participation on the board, firm characteristics, firm performance, ownership, and firm governance. The sample covers the twelve-year period. The sample statistics of CEO board membership reveal that on average, approximately 30% of NZ CEOs do not sit on their company board. In addition, the number (percentage) of incidences of CEOs off their company board has been increasing. Specifically, the percentage of CEOs off the board was approximately 20% in 1997 but 42% in 2008. Models examining the determinants of CEO board participation indicate that the probability of CEO board membership is significantly related to the opacity of firms' information environment and the strength of firms' governance environment. Specifically, the probability of CEO board membership is significantly affected by firm size, firm age, percentage of independent directors, board ownership, and multiple directorships in independent companies. In particular, firm size and percentage of independent directors on the board possess economic significance. The negative association between the probability of CEO board membership and the strength of firms' governance environment is consistent with CEO utility maximization. I also find that although CEO board membership is positively related to ROA, ROE and Jensen's alpha in basic regression models, the positive effect observed in accounting performance models disappears after controlling for self-selection. In other words, firms with better accounting firm performance tend to appoint their CEOs on the board. This may attribute to the possibility that CEO board membership is optimally determined by shareholders. The evidence from a market-based model also reflects shareholder interests after controlling for the negative self-selection behavior. As an additional analysis, I examine the determinants of different degrees of CEO board involvement where CEOs on the board are categorized into CEO-director and CEO duality (the CEO also holds the position of the chairman of the board). This analysis shows that a number of explanatory variables have a non-linear relationship with the degree of CEO board involvement. For example, CEO board involvement is negatively related to firm age and multiple directorships in independent companies but positively related to their squared terms. To the contrary, CEO board involvement is positively related to Tobin's Q ratio and percentage of independent directors but negatively related to their squared terms. Moreover, basic regression results examining the effect of the extent of CEO board involvement on firm performance reveal that dual firms and CEO-off-the-board firms are associated with lower accounting firm performance than CEO-director firms, but dual firms are associated with better Jensen's alpha and CEO-off-the-board firms are associated with lower Jensen's alpha. The robustness analysis finds that the negative effect of CEO duality on operating performance is significantly mitigated by self-selection and the effect of CEOs off the board on operating performance is intensified by self-selection. In other words, after taking into account the self-selection bias, CEO duality status provides strong evidence for CEO utility maximization whereas CEOs off the board are optimally chosen given the underlying characteristics. However, the results from the market-based models show the exact opposite story after controlling for the self-selection bias: CEO duality is optimally chosen whereas the costs of CEOs off the board are greater than their benefits in firms with CEOs off the board, providing evidence for CEO utility maximization.