My dissertation focuses on foreign entrepreneurs—individuals who establish firms outside of their native countries. Despite the prevalence of foreign entrepreneurs, their strategic choices have received little attention in the research literature. For example, when starting a firm, an entrepreneur must decide whether to manage the business personally or hire a local manager, yet we know little about how this choice affects firm performance. To examine this issue, in the first study I use a novel dataset of foreign entrepreneurial firms in Russia and a visa policy change as an instrument for the owner-manager choice. Contrary to the expectation that foreign entrepreneurs would underperform local managers due to the liability of foreignness, I find that foreign owner-managers can benefit their firms: Exogenous assignment of a local manager in place of a foreign owner-manager reduces profits. Foreign owner-managers benefit their firms by hiring cheap native-country labor as well as through reduced agency costs. The second study examines how private benefits of occupying a managerial position affect an entrepreneur’s choice between owner-management and hiring an agent. I show that foreign entrepreneurs with a strong desire to reside in a host country are more likely to become owner-managers. These results are consistent with the idea that entrepreneurs expecting to gain private benefits from managing their firms are more likely to become owner-managers. Moreover, I demonstrate that entrepreneurs are willing to substitute the non-pecuniary benefits associated with relocation for firm profit. These findings add to a growing literature exploring the role of personal preferences in entrepreneurs’ strategic decisions, such as location choice and ownership structure. The third study examines the impact of media coverage on the location choices of foreign firms. Publicly available media information has largely been ignored by the location literature, perhaps because its impact on location choice is expected to be trivial. This study challenges this assumption: Using a new instrument for media coverage (a major anniversary of a city’s establishment date), I show that extensive foreign media coverage of a city increases the number of foreign entrants. Moreover, this effect is strongest for socially and geographically distant firms and entrepreneurs.

My dissertation focuses on foreign entrepreneurs—individuals who establish firms outside of their native countries. Despite the prevalence of foreign entrepreneurs, their strategic choices have received little attention in the research literature. For example, when starting a firm, an entrepreneur must decide whether to manage the business personally or hire a local manager, yet we know little about how this choice affects firm performance. To examine this issue, in the first study I use a novel dataset of foreign entrepreneurial firms in Russia and a visa policy change as an instrument for the owner-manager choice. Contrary to the expectation that foreign entrepreneurs would underperform local managers due to the liability of foreignness, I find that foreign owner-managers can benefit their firms: Exogenous assignment of a local manager in place of a foreign owner-manager reduces profits. Foreign owner-managers benefit their firms by hiring cheap native-country labor as well as through reduced agency costs. The second study examines how private benefits of occupying a managerial position affect an entrepreneur’s choice between owner-management and hiring an agent. I show that foreign entrepreneurs with a strong desire to reside in a host country are more likely to become owner-managers. These results are consistent with the idea that entrepreneurs expecting to gain private benefits from managing their firms are more likely to become owner-managers. Moreover, I demonstrate that entrepreneurs are willing to substitute the non-pecuniary benefits associated with relocation for firm profit. These findings add to a growing literature exploring the role of personal preferences in entrepreneurs’ strategic decisions, such as location choice and ownership structure. The third study examines the impact of media coverage on the location choices of foreign firms. Publicly available media information has largely been ignored by the location literature, perhaps because its impact on location choice is expected to be trivial. This study challenges this assumption: Using a new instrument for media coverage (a major anniversary of a city’s establishment date), I show that extensive foreign media coverage of a city increases the number of foreign entrants. Moreover, this effect is strongest for socially and geographically distant firms and entrepreneurs.

My dissertation consists of two chapters exploring several aspects of empirical corporate finance with a special focus on founder CEOs and family firms. Chapter 1 focuses on the impact of founder CEO leadership on firm value in publicly listed U.S. firms. Previous research on how founder CEOs affect firm value shows mixed results. Using a natural experiment whereby I measure the impact of the sudden deaths of CEOs during the period 1964–2018, I document that stock prices increase by 1.56% upon founder CEOs’ deaths and decrease by 2.89% upon professional CEOs’ deaths. Next, I develop a novel measure of managerial private benefits and discuss several new insights. First, I document that the positive stock price reactions to the sudden deaths of founder CEOs are mainly driven by the fact that founder CEOs extract two times greater private benefits relative to professional CEOs. Second, segregating private benefits into two parts – nepotism and non-nepotism – I find that investors react to both types of private benefits. Third, investor reactions are more pronounced for tunneling-related disclosed private benefits than for investment-related non-disclosed private benefits. Fourth, investors reactions are more pronounced for private benefits related to underinvestment than for private benefits related to overinvestment. Overall, my paper highlights the impact of CEO leadership styles on shareholder wealth. Chapter 2 examines significant family ownership in publicly listed U.S. firms. Instead of holding a diversified portfolio, family owners, such as the Waltons of Walmart, hold large fractions of their wealth in a single stock. To explain this decision, we build a unique model of ambiguity aversion wherein the family’s information advantage in their firm allows them to more accurately estimate value-at-risk in tail events relative to the diversified portfolio. Using an index of macroeconomic uncertainty, we find a strong, negative relation between the uncertainty beta and both family ownership and involvement. Also consistent with our predictions, we document that families with high absolute wealth or risk aversion are unlikely to exit the firm. Our analysis provides an explanation for a family owner’s decision to hold a concentrated stake in a single firm in countries with well-developed financial markets and legal regimes. / Business Administration/Finance

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:26:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Matheus Fernandes Junior.pdf: 862744 bytes, checksum: 7ae0f1de3ba158af12066864631a3dad (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-02-10 / Fundo Mackenzie de Pesquisa / Family control and management can be considered efficient and beneficial to corporate performance by reducing conflicts between shareholders and managers, lowering administrative myopia, reducing information asymmetry and profiting from social and political family influence. On the other hand, they may also be inefficient and harmful to performance by bringing conflicts between majority and minority shareholders, by being subject to nepotism and particularism, by obstructing takeovers and by extending family conflicts into the firm. It ends in doubts about positive, negative or null correlation of family control and management and corporate performance. This study investigated this issue, bringing two main contributions: the analysis of family or individual control, founding family control and founder CEO administration and its relation with performance for the Brazilian environment, and the deployment of a specific measurement index for corporate governance, which is usually approached via proxies in existing literature. Empirical analysis evaluating the performance of 230 companies with higher liquidity (on the Sao Paulo stock exchange BM&FBOVESPA) in the years of 2006, 2007 and 2008 and evaluated taking into consideration family control, founding family control and CEO position occupied by the person who founded the company (CEO founder). They were compared with control groups without such characteristics. Econometric models showed no evidence of different market performance for family or founding family control. However, CEO founder showed superior market performance compared with non CEO founder firms. Operational performance measured by accountancy parameters of family controlled, founding family controlled and founder CEO managed companies was lower than operational performance of other companies. Such results differ from the ones obtained in the US and Western Europe, which showed both superior market and operational performance for family, founding family control and founder CEO administration. / As estruturas de controle e administração familiares são apontadas, por um lado, como eficientes e benéficas ao desempenho das empresas pelo seu potencial de redução de conflitos entre acionistas e administradores, menor miopia administrativa, reduzida assimetria de informação e possível influência social e política das famílias, entre outros fatores. Por outro, são apontadas como estruturas prejudiciais ao desempenho, por serem fonte de conflitos entre os acionistas majoritários e minoritários, estarem sujeitas ao nepotismo e particularismo, pela inibição de takeovers, por estenderem os conflitos familiares à empresa e assim por diante. As conclusões sobre a correlação (positiva, negativa ou inexistente) destes fatores com o desempenho das empresas seguem dúbias. Este trabalho investigou esta questão, trazendo duas contribuições principais: o estudo da relação entre controle familiar ou individual, famílias fundadoras e administração do fundador no contexto nacional e o uso de um índice específico para a medida da governança corporativa como variável de controle, o qual usualmente é tratado pela literatura estrangeira através de proxies. Na análise empírica foi investigado o desempenho das 230 empresas mais líquidas listadas na BM&FBOVESPA, nos anos de 2006, 2007 e 2008 frente ao controle familiar, ao controle da família fundadora da empresa e ao fato do cargo de CEO ser ocupado pela pessoa que fundou a firma, comparandoas aos grupos de controle não familiares ou não geridos pelo fundador. Modelos econométricos indicaram que, sob o ponto de vista de mercado, não há evidências claras de diferenças de desempenho entre empresas cujo controle é familiar ou individual e das famílias fundadoras e as empresas em geral. Já as empresas administradas pelo fundador (CEO fundador) apresentaram desempenho de mercado (Valor de Mercado sobre o Valor Contábil e Q de Tobin) superior às demais. Por outro lado, o desempenho operacional, medido por critérios contábeis, foi menor para o controle familiar, da família fundadora e para a administração do CEO fundador, comparado às empresas em geral. Os resultados referentes ao desempenho operacional diferem dos obtidos em estudos realizados nos Estados Unidos e Europa Ocidental que apontam relações positivas entre o desempenho de mercado e operacional - e o controle e administração familiares.