Determinants of corporate anti-takeover provisions

In this paper I study empirically the industry and firm characteristics that determine the level of corporate antitakeover protection. I find that the level of antitakeover protection is negatively associated with the level of firm-specific organizational capital and with stock market volatility. On the other hand, firms that allow a larger degree of antitakeover protection to their managers do indeed invest more in long term projects and operate in more concentrated industries. All these findings are consistent with a managerial entrenchment interpretation of corporate antitakeover provisions.Takeover defenses, Organizational capital, Product market competition, Managerial compensation

Differentiation and the relationship between product market competition and price discrimination

We investigate how the effect of competition on price discrimination varies depending on the level of quality provided by companies in the hospitality industry. Our findings reconcile conflicting results of previous literature on this topic. Namely, we provide strong empirical evidence that competition affects differently the price of single and double rooms of hotels with greater quality versus those with lower quality. In the presence (absence) of differentiation, competition increases (decreases) price discrimination. Our findings are robust to the use of econometric techniques that alleviate endogeneity concerns.

Are shareholders environmental "laggards"? Corporate Governance and environmental firm performance

From a reactive, antagonistic stance towards environmental regulations, many firms have evolved to act in a pro-active fashion to integrate environmental issues into their core strategies. Using measures of different corporate governance instruments that proxy for the ability of managers or shareholders to implement their strategic preferences we demonstrate empirically that shareholders are indeed laggards because they lower firm environmental performance while the latter actually has positive effects on firm financial performance. Managers, however, push for better environmental and hence financial performance and thus act against shareholders preferences, but in their interest.Corporate governance, Environmental performance, Financial performance

The effect of diversification on performance revisited: diversification discount, premium, or both?

In this paper we argue conceptually and show empirically that the effect of diversification on performance is not homogeneous across industries, as previously assumed in the literature on diversification in strategy and finance. Some industries may be more friendly environments for diversified firms than for specialists, or vice versa. After replicating the main findings in finance and strategy, we show that the number of specialists in an industry is an important moderator of the diversification-performance relationship, which determines the existence of a diversification discount, a premium, or the curvilinear relationship frequently found in strategy research.Diversification, Empirical research, Performance

ARE STRATEGY RESEARCHERS WORSE STRATEGY TEACHERS IN BUSINESS SCHOOLS?

In this study we examine whether in business schools a professor’s research quality impacts her performance in the classroom. We build a novel dataset of students’ teaching evaluations of 922 strategic management courses in a top-ranked business school in Spain in the period 2011-2016 linking it to the publication outcome of each professor. We find a significant positive association between research quality measured by the sum of the number of publications in a six-year interval and students’ evaluations of teaching. Specifically, we find that an increase of two standard deviations on our variable of research quality is associated to an increase in students’ evaluations equivalent to the jump from being a median professor to being in the top quartile of best performers in class. Moreover, we find that a professor with four publications in a six year period increases the likelihood of her students choosing strategy elective courses up to 21.5 percent. We also find a positive and strongly significant interaction of research quality with course length, suggesting that the benefits of research may emerge specifically in longer courses. These findings extend the current discourse on the impact of research on teaching to strategic management courses in business schools

Regulation, Innovation and Productivity

This paper estimates the average effect of regulatory intensity and administrative redtape on productivity and innovation. For this purpose we exploit the exogenous variation of the decentralization process that has taken place in Spain during the last three decades. Using objective proxies for legislative and regulatory activity such as the number of pages and number of new norms published in the regional legislative reporters we find a strong negative impact of regulatory intensity on regional innovation and productivity.

When "more" is not better.

This article examines the value-creation capacity of intra-platform competition (IPC) and exclusivity; two main strategies platforms use to incentivize, accumulate and extract rent from complementary content resources - complementors. Building on the concept of ´resource functionality´ we show that, for enhanced levels of IPC, exclusive complementors have limited functional value and rareness, failing to bring differentiation capacity to the platform´s system. Also, in line with the logic of ´capability equivalence´, we show that platform´s differentiation in terms of the composition of complementors´ portfolio has a U-shaped relationship with platform performance.Complementary resources, Intra-platform competition, Platform markets, Resource functionatility, Multi-sided markets

The Dominance of Diversified Versus Specialized Firms Across Industries

Some industries are populated primarily by diversified firms, while other industries are dominated by specialized firms, which are present only in such a given industry. In this study, we analyze what factors determine the dominance of diversified versus specialized firms, and its effect on firm performance. In line with transaction cost economics, we show that market concentration and the degree of variability in the diversification pattern of firms in the industry are negatively associated with the importance of the activity accounted by specialized firms across the 720 industries in our study.

Corporate governance & the environment: bad discretion, good discretion, and environmental (...)

This paper brings two important topics of corporate environmental management and corporate governance by exploring the impact of various governance mechanisms on the level of environmental performance that is realized by firms. We hypothesize that anti-takeover amendments and provisions that restrict managers´ personal liability create a sphere of "bad" discretion that allows managers to shirk by underinvesting in potentially financially beneficial levels of environmental performance. We suggest that corporate governance structures that emphasize higher levels of performance pay and lower degrees of monitoring create a degree of "good" discretion that enhances environmental firm performance.Corporate governance, Corporate environmental performance, Managerial discretion

When Necessity Becomes a Virtue: The Effect of Product Market Competition on CSR

We report evidence that Product Market Competition is positively associated to widely-used Corporate Social Responsibility ratings. In particular we show that different market concentration measures are negatively associated to social impact ratings. We also provide evidence that changes in import penetration rates instrumented by import tariffs are positively associated to these social ratings. Finally we report that firm pollution levels are negatively associated to market concentration measures. Our results suggest that -all else constant- doubling competition in the marketplace would increase CSR ratings of an average company between 184% and 800%.Strategy , Corporate social responsibility, Product market competition