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 dissertation consists of two essays on corporate finance. Essay one examines whether corporate governance affects firm performance after capital investments. I find that among firms with weak corporate governance, those with high abnormal capital investments have significantly lower stock performance than those with low abnormal capital investments. In addition, a significant portion of the difference in abnormal stock performance between the two subgroups occurs around earnings announcements. In contrast, the level of abnormal capital investments is not related to subsequent stock performance or earnings announcement returns at firms with strong corporate governance. These findings indicate that corporate governance structure enhances firm value by mitigating the over-investment problem. Essay two examines how insider trading activity prior to seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) is related to subsequent investment, operating, and financing decisions of the issuer. I find that SEO firms with more abnormal insider sales issue more seasoned equity, hold more cash and increase dividend payouts more. They also perform more poorly. Following the SEO, these firms also issue less equity and the effects of the SEO on their capital structures gradually reverses. These findings suggest that SEO firms with more abnormal insider sales are more likely to have overpriced stock, while those with less abnormal insider sales are more likely to have good investment opportunities. Insider trading activity prior to the SEO provides valuable information about the firm’s incentives to issue seasoned equity and help to predict the real activities of the issuer following the SEO. / text

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.

Thesis advisor: Thomas Chemmanur / My dissertation is comprised of three chapters. In this first chapter, I study the effect of social connections on mutual fund investors' information production and accuracy of their signals. While connected investors have access to information in their social network (information diffusion effect), social connections also reduce their incentives to acquire costly information, since they can free ride on connected peers ("free riding on friends" effect). I find this negative "free riding on friends" effect of social connections dominates information diffusion effect in the mutual fund industry, using fund managers' connections built upon their prior career experiences. First, I find that connected funds are more likely to hold the same stocks and to trade in the same direction, relative to unconnected funds. Second, I find that funds with lower network centrality earn higher alphas, even after controlling for other fund and manager characteristics. A one-standard-deviation increase in eigenvector centrality predicts a decrease of 29-37 basis points in annualized fund alphas. Third, when I define a stock-level variable PMC (Peripheral minus Central) as the difference in average portfolio weights between peripheral funds and central funds, I find that stocks with higher PMC have significantly higher abnormal stock returns. A one-standard-deviation increase in PMC predicts an increase of 1.48%-1.52% in the next quarter risk-adjusted returns (annualized). Finally, I find that PMC predicts firms' future earnings surprises. In the second chapter, co-authored with Thomas Chemmanur, Yingzhen Li, and Jie Xie, we propose a "noisy signaling" hypotheses of open market share repurchase (OMSR) programs, where the equity market equilibrium that prevails after OMSR program announcements is a partial pooling rather than a fully separating equilibrium. We argue that two complementary mechanisms, namely, actual share repurchases by firms and information production by institutions, serve to reduce the residual equity market information asymmetry facing firms subsequent to OMSR program announcements. We test the implications of this noisy signaling hypothesis using transaction-level data on trading by institutions and by a subsample of identified hedge funds, and find strong support for the above hypothesis. In the third chapter, co-authored with Thomas Chemmanur, and Jiekun Huang, we analyze how the geographical locations of institutions affect their investments in IPOs and various characteristics of the IPOs that they invest in. We argue that institutions geographically close to each other may free-ride on each other's information when evaluating IPOs, resulting in IPOs dominated by geographically clustered institutions reflecting less accurate information signals compared to those dominated by geographically dispersed institutions. We find that the equity holdings of institutions in IPOs are influenced more by the investments made by neighboring institutions. We show that an increase in the geographical dispersion of the institutions investing in an IPO is associated with higher IPO price revisions, higher firm valuations at offering and secondary market, larger IPO initial returns, greater long-run post-IPO stock returns lower information asymmetry facing an IPO firm in the equity market. Finally, the predictive power of institutional trading post-IPO for subsequent long-run stock returns and earnings surprises for the first fiscal-year end after the IPO is greater for geographically isolated institutions compared to those that are geographically clustered. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Finance.

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).

Thesis advisor: Ronnie Sadka / In the first essay, In this paper, I examine how the connections between activist hedge funds and other institutional investors affect the activist campaigns. I identify a positive causal effect of long-term relationships with other investors on the short-run and long-run performance of activists' target companies. Overall, my results highlight that connections to other institutional investors benefit institutional asset managers. In the second essay, we show that firms in the same board-interlock networks tend to have similar corporate governance practices. We utilize a novel instrument based on staggered adoptions of universal demand laws across states to identify causal peer effects in firms' decisions to adopt various governance provisions. The impact of universal demand laws on the incentives faced by directors as they seek to maximize their career outcomes is a likely mechanism explaining these effects. In the third essay, I investigate whether hedge funds employ short sales to mask their exiting intention when they engage in shareholder activism. Using a hand-collected sample, I find that the probability of a spike in short interest before exit announcements is higher in firms targeted by activists who have a history of short interest increase in their previous targets. According to my findings, the hypothesis is that these hedge funds are more likely to use short sales since they are more concerned about locking their profit and not taking the risk of exit announcements. Overall, this paper provides new evidence of a possible exiting strategy: Silent Exiting via short selling. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Finance.