This thesis investigates three topics in empirical corporate finance. In the first essay, the focus is on the role of financial constraints in the market for corporate control. In the second and third essays, we explore the effect of personal connections at board and executive levels on corporate credit rating and initial public offering (IPO) underpricing respectively. In the first essay, using a large sample of US acquisitions made between 1985 and 2013, we study the effect of financial constraints on acquisition gains and acquisition likelihood. Our findings show that financial constraints of target companies significantly increase acquisition premiums and abnormal returns for both parties. Our results further show that the presence of financial constraints in the target is one of the most important determinants of a takeover bid. This supports the idea that acquisitions may improve the ability of financially constrained companies to access capital through a better reallocation of resources within segments of the same company (e.g., internal capital market) or through better access to external markets. This would eventually benefit bidders too, as new capital would be invested in valuable growth opportunities that otherwise would expire unexercised. In the second essay, using a large sample of US public debt issues we show that personal connections between directors of issuing companies and rating agencies result in higher credit ratings. We estimate the average effect to be about one notch. The results are robust to several alternative tests including additional controls for managerial traits, placebo tests and propensity score matching. Moreover, our tests on default rates and bond yields do not appear to reflect a favourable treatment by the rating agency. Rather, they suggest that personal connections act as a mechanism to reduce asymmetric information between the rating agency and the issuer. In the final essay, using a large sample of IPOs in the U.S. we show that interpersonal connections between directors and top executives in issuers and underwriting banks result in significantly lower levels of IPO underpricing. We also examine the issuers' long-term stock returns following their IPOs. Our results indicate that the connected companies' long-term returns are not significantly different from the non-connected companies. This suggests that underwriters set lower levels of underpricing for the connected companies not to treat them favourably, but due to better flow of and stronger reliance on soft information and lower risk exposure.

本文旨在探討政府公關對記者間日常互動與危機運作，雖以政府公關為研究角度，然互動過程是你來我往的動態過程，不應只從單一面向研究，必須知曉雙方的立場與看法，才能較宏觀瞭解消息來源與記者兩者互動的情形。鑑於過去研究不是單從消息來源就是從記者角度出發，本研究以政府公關與記者為研究對象，探討政府公關日常對記者的互動關係與行為模式，而這些關係在危機時是否能為政府公關所用。 本研究以政府公關與記者的互動為分析資料，探討四個面向：第一，政府公關如何與記者互動，並且管理維繫雙方善意的關係；第二，政府公關影響新聞產製的方式；第三，政府公關與記者之間關係如何轉化為人脈、人情與信任而為之所用；第四，政府公關對記者日常互動往來，當政府公關面臨危機運作產生的效用或影響。 本研究採用深度訪談法，訪問政府公關與記者各三位，從中歸納出政府公關對記者的日常互動與危機運作，包括「政府公關與記者互動影響因素」、「政府公關操縱新聞產製」、「政府公關運用人際關係」以及政府公關面臨危機個案之運用。 / This study aims to analyze interactions of government public relations officers with journalists and crisis management. Although this study takes the viewpoints from the government public relations officers, as the interaction is a two-way dynamic communication process, we should examine the positions and perspectives of both parties so as to understand the real situations between them in a macroscopic method. Since the past studies take viewpoints from either sources or journalists, this study takes both government public relations officers and journalists as study objects, and discusses their behavior to see if the government public relations officers are able to utilize the relationships when crises take place. The study includes four aspects: (1) How government public relations officers interact with journalists and manage to maintain a fine relationship. (2) How government public relations officers affect the news production. (3) How the relationship between both sides converts into personal connections, sympathy and trust, which then can be utilized. (4) How the daily interactions benefit or impact crisis management of the government public relations officers. This study employs in-depth interview as the study method. The interviewees are three government public relations officers and three journalists. The study results indicate that the daily interactions between the two sides and crisis management can be divided into four parts: “the necessary elements of the interactions between government public relations officers and journalists”, “government public relations officers’ manipulation of news production”, “government public relations officers’ utilization of interpersonal connections”, and “the government public relations officers’ utilization of relationships when crises arise”.