Journal of Multinational Financial Management最新文献

This paper examines the financial structure and bank relationships of multinational firms in Italy, a large European country strongly reliant on bank debt. We show that multinationals are, on average, more leveraged than non-internationalized companies. Moreover, multinationals have larger shares of both financial debt and bank debt as a percentage of total debt, benefit from lower interest rates, maintain more bank relationships, and are less dependent on the primary bank for the firm. Overall, these findings suggest that globally diversified firms have better access to credit markets than domestic companies. These results are robust to estimation methods that address the potential endogeneity of the choice to go international, such as matching and instrumental variable estimation.

This study examines the effect of foreign institutional investors (FIIs) on executive compensation incentives. Using the quasi-natural experiment of Shanghai (Shenzhen)–Hong Kong Stock Connect, we show that the presence of FIIs has a positive effect on pay-for-performance sensitivity (PPS) and helps to decrease excessive compensation. We also demonstrate that good corporate governance and high accounting information quality would be two possible underlying channels. Our results are more pronounced for firms with fewer state-owned shareholders and powerful managers. Overall, our results indicate that compared with domestic counterparts, FIIs are more effective at improving firms’ executive compensation incentives.

We examine how climate change risk impacts corporate social responsibility using an international firm-level sample. Exploiting a new firm-level measure of climate change risk, we find that firms significantly adjust their CSR standards upwards in response to climate change risk shocks. Using the difference in difference (DiD) approach and natural disaster shocks as plausibly exogenous shocks to climate change risk, we document an increase in CSR performance for affected firms relative to their unaffected peers after severe natural disasters. Additionally, we observe that the sensitivity of CSR performance to climate change risk jumps after the release of the Stern Review and the Paris Agreement. Furthermore, we find that this impact is more pronounced for firms in climate-sensitive sectors, firms with more growth options, firms with higher governance standards, and firms in highly competitive industries. Overall, our findings reveal that climate change uncertainty can trigger firms to invest more in CSR activities to hedge against regulatory and physical risks.

We investigate whether a home country’s culture determines lending behavior of foreign bank subsidiaries in host countries during both prosperous and difficult economic periods. We employ a dataset of foreign-owned banks originating from 46 home countries and operating in 47 host countries during 1996–2018. The results show that, in general, only certain cultural dimensions of the home country influence the foreign bank subsidiaries’ lending. However, this impact strengthens significantly during crises.

This paper empirically investigates the effects of exchange demutualization on listed firms around the world. In particular, it examines how stock exchange demutualization affects stock liquidity and how the effect varies by exchange operating performance and country development level. We find that stock liquidity improves following exchange demutualization. Specifically, the effect is more evident among exchanges with stronger operating performance which tend to diversify their revenue, and which belong to developed countries. Furthermore, we identify an increase in the market share of exchanges in developed markets in response to exchange ownership conversion, which is mostly driven by domestic order flow. Overall, this paper highlights the importance of the exchange ownership structure strategy in enhancing financial market quality in international markets.

This study examines the impact of the ownership structure of oil revenues on financial markets and institutions, and the intermediating role of political institutions. Using the fixed-effects model and GMM for robustness, we analyse data from 82 oil-producing countries. We find several key results. Firstly, government ownership of oil revenues undermines the efficiency of financial institutions when the quality of political institutions is weak, but enhances their efficiency when political institutions are strong. Secondly, the impact of private ownership of oil revenues is negative on the depth of and access to financial institutions when the quality of political institutions is weak, but positive when political institutions are strong. We observe similar threshold effects for the depth of and access to financial markets in the subsample of developing countries. We conclude that oil-producing countries need solid political institutions to benefit from oil wealth and to boost financial development.

This study examines the impact of geopolitical risk (GPR) on corporate innovation in China. Using the GPR Index constructed by Caldara and Iacoviello (2018), we find that, first, GPR has a significantly positive effect on corporate innovation. Second, the effect is more pronounced for state-owned firms and firms with more government subsidies, overseas businesses, and product market competition. Third, GPR motivates firms to innovate mainly through the degree of threat. Finally, heterogeneous exposure to GPR is positively correlated with corporate innovation. This study enriches the empirical research on the impact of GPR on corporate decision-making.

Extreme weather events have been occurring in recent years with high frequency and resulting in enormous physical and monetary damages. There is a large strand of literature illustrating how past disaster experiences alter individuals’ behavioral decisions in the future, leading them to make inappropriate decisions. In view of this, the main topic of this research is to explore whether companies choose to pursue stability and low risk after experiencing catastrophes. By investigating the impact of 33 U.S. hurricanes and 4 tropical cyclones on U.S. public companies’ investment policies, the empirical results reveal that firms located in disaster regions reduce their investment and capital expenditures during the post-disaster period. We further implement several robustness tests regarding subsample analyses, the propensity-score matching sample, and excluding the impact associated with the 2008 global financial crisis. Evidence of the robustness tests remain consistent and conjecture that companies indeed are inclined to behave more conservatively after experiencing climatic disasters.

Global bonds are debt securities placed in multiple markets with globally connected trading and clearing mechanisms. This paper studies the relation between global bond issuers’ currency denomination decisions and prevailing borrowing costs. The results show that issuers of these globally fungible debt instruments make currency denomination decisions that are inconsistent with a belief in either covered or uncovered interest parity. Supranational institutions and borrowers from advanced economies exhibit a stronger tendency to engage in this type of opportunistic behavior than emerging economy borrowers. Furthermore, global bond borrowers respond more strongly to deviations from covered interest parity after the 2008 global financial crisis.

This study examines the impact of board governance on idiosyncratic risk in the context of Chinese listed firms. Contrary to previous evidence from developed markets, we show that good board governance significantly reduces idiosyncratic risk in China. We also show that non-state-owned and foreign firms are relatively more capable of minimizing idiosyncratic risk than are state-owned and private firms. The empirical results obtained from CAPM are not sensitive to alternative proxies of idiosyncratic risk. We also find a significantly stronger impact of board governance on idiosyncratic risk after controlling for endogeneity and performing a sensitivity analysis. Our findings provide valuable insights into firm risk-taking behaviour in emerging markets.