Debt holding by managers, i.e., inside debt, aligns the incentives of managers more closely with those of debtholders, reducing agency costs of debt (Jensen and Meckling (1976) and Edmans and Liu (2011)). My thesis investigates the effect of managerial ownership of debt on corporate risk-taking, bank loan contracting, and accounting conservatism. / In the first chapter I examine the effect of managerial ownership of debt on agency costs of debt problems related to risk-taking. I find that higher managerial ownership of debt implements lower corporate risk-taking, in terms of less investment in R&D, more investment in capital expenditures, and more corporate diversification. The role of inside debt in moderating risk-taking is more pronounced in firms with high level of default risk. These findings suggest that managers with large inside debt holdings are less likely to pursue risky projects that potentially transfer wealth from debtholders to shareholders. / In the second chapter I examine how terms of bank loans are related to managerial ownership of debt. Specifically, the analysis uncovers significant evidence of lower loan spreads for firms with larger debt ownership by CEOs. The negative relation is more pronounced when creditors face higher expropriation risk and when the CEO's expected retirement horizon is beyond loan maturity. I also find that loans to firms with larger managerial debt holdings are associated with smaller lending syndicates, fewer covenant restrictions, and less collateral requirement, consistent with lenders anticipating lower expropriation risk at these firms. / In the third chapter I examine the relation between accounting conservatism and managerial ownership of debt. Consistent with debt holdings by managers mitigating the debtholder-shareholder conflicts and reducing debtholders' demand for accounting conservatism, I find significant evidence of less conservative financial reporting at firms whose CEOs have accumulated more deferred compensation and pension benefits. This negative relation is more pronounced in firms with higher expected agency costs of debt and in firms that can credibly commit to a higher level of conservatism if required by debtholders. These findings are robust to using a number of alternative accounting conservatism measures and to correcting for potential endogeneity of managerial ownership of debt. / Xin, Xiangang. / Advisers: Danqing Young; Oliver M. Rui; Cong Wang. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-07(E), Section: A. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 134-140). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

This dissertation is a legal and cultural history of personal debt in mid-nineteenth-century Moscow region. Historians have shown how the judicial reform of 1864 dismantled an old legal apparatus that was vulnerable to administrative interference and ultimately depended upon the tsar's personal authority, replacing it with independent judges, jury trials, and courtroom oratory. But as many legal scholars will agree, political rhetoric about law and high-profile appellate cases fail to capture the full diversity of legal phenomena. I therefore study imperial Russian law in transition from the perspective of individuals who used the courts and formed their legal strategies and attitudes about law long before the reform. I do so through close readings of previously unexamined materials from two major archives in Russia: the Central Historical Archive of Moscow and the State Archive of the Russian Federation, including the records of county- and province-level courts and administrative bodies, supplemented by the records of the charitable Imperial Prison Society. I also analyze the relevant legislation found in imperial Russia's Complete Collection of the Laws. Specific topics covered in the study include the cultural and social profiles of creditors and debtors and of their relations, the connection between debt and kinship structures and strategies, the institution of debt imprisonment and its rituals, various aspects of court procedure, as well as the previously unstudied issue of white-collar crime in imperial Russia. I have found that debt was ubiquitous in Russian life, as in other pre-industrial societies in which cash was scarce, incomes erratic, and formal credit institutions insufficient. It was also overwhelmingly personal, relying heavily on kinship, acquaintance, and the reputations of borrowers and lenders. My research contradicts the conventional view of Russian society at mid-century as a system of predominantly separate and closed estates. The system of private credit centered in Moscow connected merchants, civil servants, and the landowning gentry, and even wealthy peasants, some of whom lived or owned property in far-away provinces (privately-owned serfs were of course subordinate to their landlords in matters involving property). The credit network was sufficiently extensive and diverse to place an additional burden on Russia's already overworked legal system. The central theme of my study is the engagement of ordinary Russian lenders and borrowers of varying wealth and status, male and female, with each other and with the legal system (and through it with the state) during a crucial turning point in Russia's social and political history. My research also questions the dominant notion of a closed system of inquisitorial justice in pre-reform courts. The cases I examined reveal the pre-reform legal process as messy, incomplete, polyphonic, and open to extra-legal influences, including those of tsarist administrative officials. Private individuals retained significant discretion and initiative both according to the law and in practice, beginning with the way a debt transaction was formalized and ending with the decision to imprison a debtor or to commit an insolvent to a criminal trial. I therefore argue that pre-reform law with all its faults was a site of conflict, cooperation, and negotiation among diverse individuals seeking to protect and promote their property interests and between private persons and government officials. I show the law to be a key tool for Russia's propertied classes for asserting their own rights against other private individuals and/or against the state. Thus, I reinterpret the relationship between individuals and the administration, modifying the commonly held view of the Nicholaevan bureaucracy as a monolith imposing itself on the tsar's subjects. As the only study of imperial civil law in practice, this dissertation offers unique evidence on the operations of state and society in Russia at the key period of the Great Reforms, as well as establishes a basis for understanding subsequent legal developments.

Zugl.: Bern, Universiẗat, Diss., 2007.

This thesis examines creditors' use of the oppression remedy under the Canada Business Corporations Act and its provincial equivalents from historical and critical perspectives, assesses the consequences of the increasing willingness of Canadian courts to make the remedy available to creditors and concludes by offering some solutions to the problems that are identified. Part I traces the historical development of the oppression remedy, first in the United Kingdom and then in common law Canada. Next, the current state of the law relating to the oppression remedy is briefly examined, followed by a review of recent developments with respect to the use of the oppression remedy by creditors. Part II is a critical review of the evolving law with respect to creditors' use of the oppression remedy. This part of the thesis focuses on: (i) the relationship and potential conflict between the oppression remedy and other available remedies; and (ii) the impact of creditors' uses of the oppression remedy on the relationship between the corporation and its other stakeholders, including issues of shareholders' and directors' liability. In Part III, it is argued that the present use of the oppression remedy by creditors is not being developed in a coherent and principled manner. Certain guidelines are offered to provide the courts with reasonable controls on and principles to guide the use of the oppression remedy by creditors. In particular, it is argued that the oppression remedy should not be available to creditors when there are, either under corporate legislation or other, general legislation, appropriate remedies already available. The result would be that the oppression remedy should be available to creditors only in the limited category of cases where the creditor has no other effective remedy and the conditions for the use of the oppression remedy are met.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Giessen, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 253-271).

Universiẗat, Diss., 2006--Heidelberg.

Univ., Diss.--Mainz, 2004. / Literaturverz. S. XV - XXII.

Universiẗat, Diss.--Heidelberg, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 248-268).

Diss.--Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [223]-240) and index.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Köln, 2005.