The Adverse Effect of Information on Governance and Leverage

We study the effect that internal information systems have upon a firm’s leverage and corporate governance choices. Information systems lower governance costs by facilitating more targeted interventions. But they also generate asymmetric information between firms and their investors. As a result, firms may attempt to signal their superior quality by assuming more leverage. In some circumstances, this can reduce governance incentives and result in inferior outcomes. Investors anticipate this effect, and it renders information systems inefficient

Debt financing and firm performance: The moderating role of board independence

This article investigates the moderating role of board independence in the relationship between debt financing and performance of emerging market firms. We have used an empirical model in which the firm’s accounting profitability is a dependent variable and the independent variables are debt financing, board independence, the interaction variable made of debt financing and board independence as well as various control variables. Our analysis is based on a panel data set of 300 listed firms in Vietnam between 2013 and 2017. Our study finds that debt financing has a significantly negative effect and that board independence reduces the adverse impact of debt financing on accounting profitability. Our results are consistent across different estimation models and methods

Women on boards and greenhouse gas emission disclosures

We apply institutional and board capital theory to examine whether women on boards are associated with disclosure and quality of <i>corporate greenhouse gas</i> (GHG) emissions related reporting. We examine the research problem in Australia in a period when no requirements existed for listed companies to appoint female directors or to report GHG emissions. This environment allows us to examine the association between women on boards and GHG emissions related disclosure in annual and sustainability reports in a voluntary setting. We find that companies with multiple female directors make GHG emissions related disclosures that are of higher quality

The effects of corporate governance mechanisms on the financial leverage–profitability relation

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the moderating effects of corporate governance mechanisms on the financial leverage–profitability relation in emerging market firms. Design/methodology/approach The paper examines the impacts by estimating the empirical model in which a firm’s accounting profitability is a dependent variable, while financial leverage, board size, board independence, CEO duality, CEO ownership, state ownership and the interaction variables are predictors. The paper uses the panel data set of 295 listed firms in Vietnam in the period 2011-2015 and two key econometric methods for panel data, namely, the two-stage least square instrumental variable and general moments method. Findings The paper finds the evidence for the significant and positive effect of board size, board independence and state ownership on the financial leverage–profitability relation. The effect of CEO duality on the financial leverage–profitability relation tends to be negative, and the impact CEO ownership inclines to be positive, although both of them are statistically insignificant. The results are consistent across different estimation methods. Originality/value This paper is the first investigating the moderating effect of various corporate governance mechanisms on the financial leverage–profitability relationship in emerging market firms

POLICY REGIME CHANGE AND CORPORATE CREDIT IN BULGARIA: ASYMMETRIC SUPPLY AND DEMAND RESPONSES

The paper seeks to assess how a major policy regime change – such as the introduction of the currency board in Bulgaria – affects the flow of bank credit to the corporate sector. An attempt is made to identify the determinants of corporate credit separately from the viewpoint of lenders and borrowers. The estimated credit supply and credit demand equations provide empirical evidence of important changes in microeconomic behavioral patterns which can be associated with the policy regime change. The results also suggest a considerable asymmetry in the response of credit supply and credit demand to the policy shock: while the supply shifts were quite pronounced, the patterns of firms’ credit demand remained fairly stable. The policy implications of the detected asymmetry in microeconomic adjustment are also discussed in the paper.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39993/3/wp607.pd

Does geography matter to bondholders?

We find that the location of corporate headquarters significantly affects the firm’s bondholders. Similar to Loughran and Schultz (2006) and others, who show that investors are better able to obtain information on nearby companies, we look at firms located in large metropolitan cities, small cities, and rural areas and find that firms located in remote rural areas exhibit significantly higher costs of debt capital (of up to 65 basis points) in comparison to their urban counterparts. Unlike other studies that focus on the role of information asymmetries in the local bias of investors and decision makers, we are able to show that firms in remote areas experience greater costs of debt capital primarily because of a greater difficulty of monitoring their activities. We find that the adverse impact of bad corporate governance on bondholders is magnified in geographically remote firms, primarily because geographic distance reduces the effectiveness of external monitoring. Consistent with that, we show that in the private placement market, where firms are closely monitored by institutional investors, location plays no role in explaining the cross-sectional variation in the cost of debt capital across companies. We also find that the passage of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which brought about regulatory improvements in monitoring and governance, significantly reduced the agency costs of debt in rural firms. Taken together, our results indicate that the firm’s information environment interacts with the impact of corporate governance, particularly affecting the effectiveness of external monitoring in alleviating agency problems between insiders and debt holders.

Corporate cash holdings: Evidence from a different institutional setting

This paper investigates the determinants of Swiss non-financial firms’ cash holdings over the 1995 to 2004 period. The median Swiss firm holds almost twice as much cash and cash equivalents as the median UK or US firm. Our results indicate that there is a negative relationship between asset tangibility and cash holdings and a non-linear relationship between leverage and cash holdings. Dividend payments are positively related to cash reserves. However, there is no robust impact of firm size on cash. We also cannot detect a significantly positive relationship between growth opportunities (measured by the marketto- book ratio) and cash holdings, suggesting that the financing hierarchy theory is of little importance for the liquidity planning of Swiss firms. Dynamic panel estimation reveals that Swiss firms adjust their cash holdings only slowly towards an endogenous target cash ratio. Looking at a firm’s corporate governance structure, we reveal a non-linear relationship between managerial ownership and cash holdings, indicating an incentive alignment effect and an opposing effect related to increasing risk aversion. Finally, our results indicate that firms where the CEO at the same time serves as the COB hold significantly more cash.Cash holdings, corporate governance, dynamic adjustment.

The influence of banks on auditor choice and auditor reporting in Japan

Debt as opposed to equity as the major source of financing and the influence of banks on the corporate governance of listed companies are unique features of the Japanese business environment. This thesis investigates how these features affect the choice of auditor by Japanese listed companies and auditor reporting by Japanese CPA firms on those companies. Pong and Kita (2006) provided some univariate analyses and indicated that Japanese companies tended to select the same external auditors as their main banks to reduce the agency costs. In this thesis, I further examine the influence of main banks on auditor selection by logistic regression and also investigate the influence of main banks on auditor reporting quality after controlling self-selection bias. Using data from Japanese listed companies in the Tokyo Stock Exchange over the 2002-2008 period, I provide empirical evidence that companies with more reliance on main bank loans are more likely to choose their main banks’ external auditors. Using the Propensity Score Matching method and the Heckman two-step binary probit model to control for self-selection bias, the empirical results support the hypothesis that main bank auditors are more likely to issue modified opinions to the borrowing companies than non-main bank auditors, providing evidence of higher audit quality from main bank auditors. As a sensitivity test, I also use discretionary accruals as a measure of audit quality. the results indicate that companies who choose the same auditors as their main banks have higher audit quality than companies who choose different auditors from their main banks. My thesis contributes to the existing auditing literature in several ways. First, by studying the influence of debt financing on auditor choice and auditor reporting, this thesis extends the auditor market research that focuses mainly on the role of auditors in equity markets to the bank-based market. Furthermore, this thesis also complements auditing research on the influence of institutions on audit quality

Does Corporate Social Responsibility Reduce the Costs of High Leverage? Evidence from Capital Structure and Product Market Interactions

Research on capital structure and product market interactions shows that high leverage is associated with substantial losses in market share due to unfavorable actions by customers and competitors. We examine whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects firms’ interactions with customers and competitors, and whether it can reduce the costs of high leverage. We find that CSR reduces losses in market share when firms are highly leveraged. By reducing adverse behavior by customers and competitors, CSR helps highly leveraged firms keep customers and guard against rivals’ predation. Our results support the stakeholder value maximization view of CSR

How Ownership Structure Affects Capital Structure and Firm Performance? Recent Evidence from East Asia

Despite the seminal work of Claessens et al. (2002), who highlighted the role of ownership structure on firm performance in East Asia, the relationship between capital structure and ownership remains much unexplored. This is important, given recent empirical and theoretical work linking capital structure and performance. The novelty of the present paper is that in examining the effects of ownership concentration on capital structure and firm performance, it not only allows for simultaneity between capital structure and firm performance, but also controls for one possible source of moral hazard related to the higher voting rights relative to cash flow rights. The paper clearly establishes that results are rather country-specific and the effects of ownership structure on firm performance cannot be delineated from its effects on leverage. More interestingly, these results highlight that higher voting rights could pose some moral hazard problem if there is a controlling manager shareholder called Cronyman in our analysis. Evidently family ownership could mitigate some of these moral hazard problems, though it could exacerbate the problem of over-lending. As such, the results presented here confirm and extend the essential findings of Claessens et al. (2002), though illustrate the importance of allowing for simultaneity between capital structure and firm performance.