Journal of Corporate Finance最新文献

This study investigates whether insiders exploit the information advantage arising from customer identity concealment to profit from selling their shares. We examine this issue in the context of China, given the voluntary nature of customer information disclosure there. We find that insider selling profitability is significantly greater when firms conceal customer identities than when they disclose them, especially when customer identities are more informative. We also find evidence of significant trading profitability for both insiders and their relatives, as well as both core and general executives. Furthermore, we find that the results are weaker for firms with more effective internal monitoring and those with more attention from sophisticated market participants but are stronger for firms with more information disclosure manipulation. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that insiders opportunistically trade on customer-related private information rather than unintentionally sell shares. In additional tests, we find that insiders deliberately conceal customer identities in response to their personal trading incentives, indicating that insiders may increase their information advantage through strategic customer information disclosure. Overall, our research sheds light on the black box of information sources of insider trading from the perspective of supply chains and the insider trading incentives behind firms' concealment of customer identities.

This paper examines how the impairment of main banks’ balance sheets affects corporate cash-holding behavior during the 2008 financial crisis using a firm–bank matched panel dataset of 2,520 firms in Japan. The major findings of this paper are as follows. First, the impairment of main banks increases firms’ cash holdings during this financial crisis. Second, this tendency is more pronounced among firms with limited financing sources and those with unstable main bank relationships. Third, holding large amounts of cash increases the value of firms with main bank impairment during the 2008 financial crisis.

Using a comprehensive sample of listed and unlisted firms from 34 European countries, we study firm-level manufacturing outcomes conditioned on foreign investment, country characteristics, and EU membership. Higher foreign ownership is associated with higher productivity but lower employment, particularly when the host or source country is an EU member and scores high on disclosure and investor protection, and low on corruption. We confirm our interpretation using staggered EU accession dates and industry-level external financial dependence interacted with a financial crisis. The subset of Eastern European countries appears to benefit from foreign investment and EU accession without losing jobs. Nevertheless, manufacturing outcomes associated with survey findings on public sentiment towards globalization and migration confirm the social and political costs of globalization.

We develop a computable general equilibrium model of firm capital structure that predicts countercyclical financing costs and procyclical financing. We extend the standard financial accelerator model by incorporating countercyclical uncertainty shocks and equity financing frictions capturing the moral hazard problem of profit diversion. In this environment, increased uncertainty restricts equity financing, resulting in a lower level of total equity, which in turn influences the debt contract. As a result of less equity utilization in the face of increased uncertainty, the default rate and debt financing costs increase, although firms reduce their investments. The amplified effect of uncertainty shocks on debt financing costs through the equity financing channel enables the model to predict countercyclical external financing costs. Existing financial accelerator models, on the other hand, cannot generate countercyclical financing costs without uncertainty amplification via equity financing, as TFP shocks, another source of business cycle, cause firms to reduce the size of business projects and, in turn, credit demand.

We identify a positive effect of patent pledgeability on corporate patenting. Our tests exploit staggered city-level policy changes that allow firms to use patents as collateral for financing. We find a significant increase in patents and patent citations for firms headquartered in cities that have adopted such policies relative to firms headquartered in cities that have not. We further show that patent pledgeability increases corporate patenting by inducing firms to shift from secrecy-based innovation to patent-based innovation, rather than by mitigating financial constraints.

We analyse the effects of the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) launched by the ECB after the burst of the Covid-19 pandemic. The effects of the programme were different from the previous asset purchases. The PEPP significantly reduced the yield on bonds that at the same time were eligible to the programme and showed a green label. Via a triple difference estimator, we show that this effect is additional to the outperformance of greens vs non-green bonds that also occurred in the set of non-eligible bonds. All in all, the estimated impact stands at 51 basis points, a value that is significant also from an economic point of view: around 20 per cent of the cost of issuing a bond. From a climate change perspective, this evidence suggests that asset purchase programmes are an effective way of supporting firms financing climate-friendly investments on the bond market. In addition, we find that the issuers that benefitted most from the PEPP improved their ESG performance to a larger extent than other issuers.

We examine how stock liquidity affects acquisitions. We hypothesize that liquidity enhances acquirer stock as an acquisition currency, especially when the target is relatively less liquid. As hypothesized, we find that more liquid firms have a greater likelihood of making stock acquisitions. Further, the difference in stock liquidity between acquirer and target firms increases payment with stock, reduces acquisition premiums, and improves acquirer announcement returns in equity deals. Consequently, firms take steps to improve stock liquidity prior to stock acquisitions. We use policy initiatives as exogenous shocks to firm liquidity to show that liquidity effects on acquisitions are plausibly causal.

Corporate lobbying positively influences firm innovation outcomes. Firms that engage more in lobbying have more patents, more patent citations, and greater patent value. We establish this causality using instrumental variables estimation. Corporate lobbying plays a role of persuasion and fosters firm innovation by transmitting valuable information to politicians, which enhances firms' external political environment. The impact of lobbying on innovation is more pronounced for firms with comparative advantages in the product market, financial health, ESG performance, and institutional support. These results contribute to a deeper understanding of the role of firms' information value in the political process and provide new insights into how lobbying buffs firm development.

We find that director pay, especially the equity-based portion, is positively related to peer firms' director pay, suggesting boards benchmark when establishing their own compensation. Such benchmarking is distinct from peer benchmarking in CEO pay. We also find a significant bias in peer selection towards peers with relatively high director pay, which helps increase board pay. Peer benchmarking of director compensation is more (less) pronounced in firms with low (high) involvement by institutional investors and firms with declining (increasing) profitability. Overall, our results are consistent with directors engaging in self-dealing when selecting compensation peers, without clear benefits to the firm.

Carbon trading is an important market mechanism to achieve carbon neutrality. This study explores the possible impact of carbon markets on the stock market performance of listed companies using data from 2013 to 2022 in China's carbon trading pilot regions. Using the event shock of delayed trading in the Chinese carbon market, we attempt to answer the question of the role of green innovation hidden under the compliance event. Results show that a 1% increase in carbon market turnover leads to an average decrease of CNY 0.123 in the company's stock price. Large-scale companies that have been listed for a short time and have poor green innovation capabilities are more vulnerable to the carbon market. Under delayed trading, firms with high green innovation capability will be profitable. By contrast, profitability is not reflected in low green innovation firms. Companies with low green innovation can reduce stock market performance owing to the carbon market's undersupply situation. Our study reveals the stock performance of different carbon trading entities under delayed trading, providing a realistic basis for firms to choose green innovation while helping to improve carbon trading market dynamics.