Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Connecticut, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-116).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

This dissertation comprises three essays in the field of empirical corporate finance and it contributes to the literature on the financial and real effects of corporate governance. Broadly defined, corporate governance encompasses all mechanisms that remove frictions in the relationship between firm insiders and outside stakeholders with claims on the cash flows of the company. The field has focused on the relationships between concentrated equity-holders and managers, but there are many other firm claimants. I consider two that are understudied: (1) The government, which holds a claim on firm cash flows through its taxation power. This stake motivates the government to detect and punish manager expropriation. And (2) passive investors, which appear not to engage with the running of individual firms in their maximally diversified portfolios but which may have a portfolio-maximization incentive to do so. In the first two chapters I hypothesize that credible government monitoring creates firm value by reducing frictions between firms and their bank lenders, allowing them to access more and cheaper financing to fund new investments. I quantify the effect in the context of a tax audit program in Ecuador wherein a sub-group of firms were chosen to be audited every year indefinitely. In the first chapter, I show that banks lend more to firms that are known to be under higher government scrutiny, both on the intensive and extensive margins, and do so at lower interest rates and longer maturities. I control for selection bias using a regression discontinuity design based on the procedure the tax authority used to choose which firms to add to the auditing program. In the second chapter, I use the same Ecuadorian setting as in the first chapter to show that government monitoring affects the real economy: Firms subject to more government monitoring increase their employment and their investment in physical capital. This is true even though the firms increase their average tax payments. The estimated employment effects jointly estimate new employment and formalization of existing employees. Investment effects are concentrated in physical capital investments, rather than in intangibles. But what mechanism is driving these results? I determine that the financial and real effects act primarily through government monitoring reducing ``hidden action'' frictions between firms and their lenders. The corporate governance effects of tax enforcement are valuable to firm investors, which update their beliefs on firms' abilities to divert firm resources going forward, making firm actions more predictable under the monitoring regime. The combination of a larger supply of bank credit at a lower price supports this mechanism. Moreover, monitored firms became more likely to borrow from a bank that they had never borrowed from before and to attract investments from new private investors. Finally, it is those firms that appear to be most likely to divert ex ante, by both tax and accounting measures of diversion, that receive the largest decrease in their cost of borrowing once they are chosen for the program. I conclude that this government monitoring, even when it was designed to maximize tax collection, had a meaningful effect on firm access to capital and on the real economy. This evidence supports the hypothesis that predictable government enforcement of laws is an important part of a comprehensive corporate governance system, lowering frictions that are not mitigated through other means and complimenting other mechanisms, such as bank monitoring. The policy implication is that an increase in tax enforcement can benefit both the government and outside firm stakeholders by generating greater tax revenue and increasing the value of the firm to outsiders. In the third chapter I test the hypothesis that shareholder governance, the primary mechanism for inducing managers to maximize own-firm value, may in some circumstances lower manager incentives to maximize the value of their firm when to do so they would need to engage in fierce competition with other firms that their shareholders also own. One way that cross-holding shareholders could incentivize managers to internalize their competition preferences is to influence the composition of executive compensation by increasing the payouts to managers when their industry does well relative to the payouts when their own firm does well. I find no robust relationship between the cross-holdings of minority shareholders and the competition incentives embedded in the compensation of top firm executives. Rather, I find that firms with shareholders that hold relatively more cross-holdings in direct competitor firms are more likely to adopt performance pay that expressly rewards out-performing peers. This chapter contributes to the current policy debate on how to regulate diversified investors by casting doubt on the anti-competitive effects of these holdings, at least through the mechanism of executive compensation, the main way that firms align shareholder and executive incentives.

Chan, Yiu Ming Gordon. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Urban Planning and Environmental Management / Master / Master of Philosophy

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-117).

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-117). Also available in print.

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

Thesis (M.M. (Finance & Investment)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Wits Business School, 2017. / This study researches the capital budgeting techniques employed by decisionmakers in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Africa. A literature review revealed that limited previous research was performed on the specific topic, although capital budgeting techniques of private companies were extensively researched. Based on these shortcomings, a knowledge gap was identified. The research performed will seek to address this gap to some extent, by collecting and discussing primary data from African SOEs. The results revealed that a substantial number of African SOEs make use of DCF techniques such as NPV (44 percent) and IRR (33 percent) in investment evaluation. Project implementation was highlighted as being the most important (67 percent) and also the most complex (56 percent) step in the capital budgeting process of African SOEs. The majority of respondents (89 percent) indicated that they do consider the assessment of risk in capital project budgeting and that scenario analyses is preferred by 78 percent of respondents. Qualitative (non-financial) factors are always a consideration in the capital budgeting process of African SOEs with environmental factors and service delivery being rated the highest. It was observed that employment creation was almost never a consideration in 44 percent of responses. The most important take-away from the study is that decision makers in African SOEs do make use of sophisticated capital budgeting techniques. It is however of concern that non-DCF techniques are used, especially in smaller organisations. For future research, it is recommended that a larger sample number of African SOEs are included. Also consider including the state-owned institutions that provide funding for capital investment in Africa. / GR2018

SUBMITTED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE REQUIREMENT FOR DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE SUBJECT OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE WITS SCHOOL OF GOVERNANCE FACULTY OF LAW, COMMERCE AND MANAGEMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND, JOHANNESBURG AUGUST 2015 / Following a plethora of scandals in both the public and private sectors, corporate governance has become the subject of contentious debates in the public domain over the past decade As a result, codes of good practice in the form of Cadbury, Greenbury, Turnbul, Hempel, Higgs, Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and Bosch Commission were ushered in different parts of Europe, Australia and the United States of America (USA). In South Africa, the King Commission on Corporate Governance was developed and subsequently modified for State Owned Enterprises (SOEs). Despite the progress noted, the SOEs environment remains in distress as boards and management struggle to maintain a balance between legislative compliance and performance. It is in the latter context that the study was inspired by the boards of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and the Electricity Supply Commission (Eskom) respectively struggle to actualise sound corporate governance practices in order to deliver shareholder value. As part of the qualitative research approach, primary data collection was conducted by means of comprehensive face-to-face interviews with board members and senior management at the two above-mentioned organisations. In total, 30 (thirty) board members and senior managers were interviewed. In addition, secondary data was collected in the form of records, strategy reports, business plans, and memos written to participants. In analysing qualitative interview data, the study utilised content analysis and cross-case analysis methods, on whose basis five themes were derived, namely: legislation and regulations; the interface between board and management; the role of the board in strategy development; performance monitoring of the board; as well as the organisational funding model. The findings of the study include: fragmented and convoluted legislation; blurring of lines between management and governance; a weak board performance monitoring culture; unclear prioritization of social policy agenda, and inadequate funding to support social policy programmes, such as infrastructure. The policy reviews create leadership instability and accentuate distrust between boards and senior managers. This study further emphasizes limitations of the theoretical frameworks underpinning corporate governance in SOEs, and also advances detailed understanding of the corporate governance issues facing SOEs. Key Words: State Owned Enterprises; Corporate Governance; Legislation; Regulations; Compliance; Boards; Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation. / MT2016