This study explained the diversity of corporate financial practices in two nations. Existing studies have emphasized the reliance on equity finance in U.S. firms and bank loans in Japanese firms. In fact, patterns of corporate finance were much more complex. Financial institutions, which were created by national economic policy and regulation, affected corporate financial practices, but corporate financial practices often differed from what policymakers expected. Differences in corporate financial practices between nations also reflected differences in the mixture of industries in each nation. Many factors such as the amount of fixed capital, the process of production, the level of risk, the degree of innovation, and the importance of the industry in the national economy affected corporate financial practices. In addition, corporate financial practices within each nation differed from firm to firm due to managers’ considerations about stock ownership, which would affect their control power; corporate finance was closely related to control over management through ownership. To explain these complexities of corporate financial practices, the study linked corporate finance with the development of financial institutions in the United States and in Japan. While financial institutions affected corporate financial practices, the response of the firms to financial institutions and opportunities were diverse. The study also attempted to grasp variations in corporate financial practices by dealing with companies in three sectors: railroads, public utilities, and manufacturing. Finally, the study examined the structure of firm ownership. Contradictory to the widely held belief that U.S. firms distributed securities more widely to the public than did Japanese firms, many large American firms remained closely held, while some Japanese counterparts built publicly-held corporations.

No description available.

No description available.

I study how insider trading interacts with the political economy, regulators, and other corporate governance mechanisms. In the first section, I examine the impact of insider trading restriction enforcement on firm innovation. U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement actions are intended to protect investors and limit expropriation by firm insiders, but enforcement could impact insiders’ incentives to contribute to value enhancing activities. Therefore, I explore how corporate innovation and performance respond to insider trading restrictions imposed by firms and regulators. Using manually collected data on SEC indictments against corporate insiders, I document more innovative activity following external insider trading restrictions. External restrictions are also followed by higher corporate investment, capital access, and operating performance. Similarly, internal blackout restrictions to insider trading are also linked to more patents. SEC and congressional rule changes serve as quasi-natural experiments resulting in shocks in enforcement and indictments for identification and inference. Overall, the results suggest insider trading restrictions and enforcement actions impact subsequent firm activities and managerial decisions by protecting outside investment, resulting in more investment and innovation. In the second section, I explore the relation between political uncertainty and insider trading. With political uncertainty elevated recently, I examine the role of political uncertainty among insiders. By measuring firm-specific political risk measured from conference calls, I observe insiders trade more actively during uncertain periods with trading volume and transaction value increasing alongside political uncertainty. The results are driven by non-routine insider transactions and purchases at firms with CEO duality and fewer insider trading restrictions. Next, I observe similar results when exploiting variation in election timing across states and alternative external measures. Moreover, I find evidence of informed insider trading by observing higher abnormal returns following insider trades amidst political uncertainty. Finally, I find political uncertainty is linked to lower bid-ask spreads and leverage but observe higher outstanding shares with more insider trading when experiencing positive political uncertainty, consistent with insiders informing markets and improving liquidity. Overall, these results suggest insiders purchase more actively and opportunistically amidst political uncertainty, improving market information quality, especially when internal governance is accommodating.

Thesis advisor: Thomas Chemmanur / Thesis advisor: David Solomon / This document comprises three essays regarding actual share repurchases. In Chapter 1, I show that external pressure in the form of equity analysts asking questions about a firm's actual repurchases can lead firms to more extensively follow through on their recently announced open market share repurchase programs. Such a phenomenon cannot be explained by mere firm characteristics. Instead, only analysts' questions that are shorter, more focused on share repurchases, and blunter in language appear to drive firms for greater follow-throughs. The second essay, detailed in Chapter 2, presents another motivation for firms to actually buy back shares under their active open market share repurchase programs. Specifically, firms with higher accounting quality will likely repurchase more shares to signal their accounting superiority after another firm operating in the same product market issues a financial restatement. As a result, the repurchasing firms separate from the pooling equilibrium with lower accounting quality firms and thus incur lower accounting-related litigation risks. Finally, in the third essay, located in Chapter 3, we compare cash dividends with share repurchases. Firms with greater heterogeneity in beliefs between insiders and outsiders, and among outside equity holders more likely prefer share repurchases to cash dividends for payout. Importantly, this finding can partially explain the disappearing dividend puzzle where rising heterogeneity in beliefs in the economy may have contributed to the substitution of cash dividends with share repurchases in the past two decades. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Finance.

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.

A plethora of recent literature on asset pricing provides plenty of empirical evidence on the importance of liquidity, governance and adverse selection of equity on pricing of assets together with more traditional factors such as market beta and the Fama-French factors. However, literature has usually stressed that these factors are priced individually. In this dissertation we argue that these factors may be related to each other, hence not only individual but also joint tests of their significance is called for. In the three related essays, we examine the liquidity premium in the context of the finer three-digit SIC industry classification, joint importance of liquidity and governance factors as well as governance and adverse selection. Recent studies by Core, Guay and Rusticus (2006) and Ben-Rephael, Kadan and Wohl (2010) find that governance and liquidity premiums are dwindling in the last few years. One reason could be that liquidity is very unevenly distributed across industries. This could affect the interpretation of prior liquidity studies. Thus, in the first chapter we analyze the relation of industry clustering and liquidity risk following a finer industry classification suggested by Johnson, Moorman and Sorescu (2009). In the second chapter, we examine the dwindling influence of the governance factor if taken simultaneously with liquidity. We argue that this happens since governance characteristics are potentially a proxy for information asymmetry that may be better captured by market liquidity of a company’s shares. Hence, we jointly examine both the factors, namely, governance and liquidity – in a series of standard asset pricing tests. Our results reconfirm the importance of governance and liquidity in explaining stock returns thus independently corroborating the findings of Amihud (2002) and Gompers, Ishii and Metrick (2003). Moreover, governance is not subsumed by liquidity. Lastly, we analyze the relation of governance and adverse selection, and again corroborate previous findings of a priced governance factor. Furthermore, we ascertain the importance of microstructure measures in asset pricing by employing Huang and Stoll’s (1997) method to extract an adverse selection variable and finding evidence for its explanatory power in four-factor regressions.