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The COVID-19 pandemic has led to economic and health crises ("twin crises") worldwide. Using a sample of firms from 73 countries over the period January to December 2020, we examine stock price reactions of multinational corporations (MNCs) and purely domestic companies (DCs) to the crisis. We find that, on average, MNCs suffer a significantly larger decline in firm value relative to DCs during the stock market crisis caused by the pandemic with notable heterogeneity in this underperformance across both industry and region. The evidence of MNC underperformance is robust to using abnormal returns, an alternative crisis window, a matched sample that accounts for differences in characteristics between MNCs and DCs, alternative model specifications, and alternative proxies for multinationality. Further analysis on the effect of government responses on the valuation gap suggests that stringent government responses exacerbate MNCs' underperformance. Finally, we show that a stronger financial system mitigates negative crisis returns, especially under stringent government responses, while real factors, such as the firm's supply chain, investments in human capital, research and development, exacerbate negative crisis returns. Our findings have important implications for managers of MNCs and government policymakers alike and contribute to studies on the international diversification-performance relation by demonstrating a dark side of globalization during a tail-risk event.La pandémie de COVID-19 a entraîné la double crise économique et sanitaire (Twin crises) dans le monde entier. À l'aide d'un échantillon d'entreprises de 73 pays sur la période de janvier à décembre 2020, nous examinons les réactions des cours boursiers des entreprises multinationales (Multinational Corporations - MNCs) et domestiques (Domestic Companies - DCs) à la crise. Nous constatons qu'en moyenne, les MNCs subissent une baisse de la valeur de l’entreprise beaucoup plus importante que les DCs pendant la crise boursière provoquée par la pandémie, et que cette sous-performance des MNCs se caractérise par une hétérogénéité notable à travers les secteurs et les régions. Cette sous-performance des MNCs est également confirmée par nos tests de robustesse utilisant les rendements anormaux, une fenêtre de crise alternative, un échantillon apparié tenant compte des différences en matière de caractéristiques entre les MNCs et les DCs, des spécifications de modèle alternatives, ainsi que diverses mesures de l’internationalisation. Une analyse plus poussée de l'impact des mesures gouvernementales sur l'écart de valorisation suggère que les mesures gouvernementales strictes aggravent la sous-performance des MNCs. Enfin, nous démontrons qu'un système financier plus solide atténue les retours négatifs de la crise, en particulier en cas de réponses gouvernementales strictes, tandis que les facteurs réels, tels que la chaîne d'approvisionnement de l'entreprise, les investissements dans le capital humain, la recherche et le développement, les intensifient. Nos résultats apportent des implications importantes aux managers des MNCs et aux responsables politiques gouvernementaux, et contribuent aux recherches portées sur la relation diversification internationale-performance en démontrant le côté sombre de la globalisation durant un événement à risque extrême.La pandemia del COVID-19 ha llevado a crisis económicas y sanitarias (“crisis gemelas”) en todo el mundo. Utilizando una muestra de empresas de 73 países durante el período comprendido entre enero y diciembre de 2020, examinamos las reacciones del precio de las acciones de las empresas multinacionales (EMN) y de las empresas puramente nacionales (ED) ante la crisis. Encontramos que, en promedio, las empresas multinacionales sufren un descenso del valor de la empresa significativamente mayor que las empresas puramente nacionales durante la crisis bursátil causada por la pandemia, con una notable heterogeneidad en este bajo desempeño tanto por industria como por región. La evidencia del bajo desempeño de las empresas multinacionales es robusta cuando se utilizan rendimientos anormales, una ventana de crisis alternativa, una muestra emparejada que da cuenta de las diferencias en las características entre las empresas multinacionales y las empresas puramente nacionales, especificaciones de modelos alternativos y proxies para multinacionalidad. Análisis adicionales sobre el efecto de las respuestas gubernamentales en la brecha de valoración sugieren que las respuestas gubernamentales estrictas exacerban el bajo rendimiento de las empresas multinacionales. Por último, mostramos que un sistema financiero más fuerte mitiga los rendimientos negativos de la crisis, especialmente bajo respuestas gubernamentales estrictas, mientras que los factores reales, como la cadena de suministro de la empresa, las inversiones en capital humano, la investigación y el desarrollo, exacerban los rendimientos negativos de la crisis. Nuestros hallazgos tienen importantes implicaciones tanto para los directivos de las empresas multinacionales como para los formuladores de las políticas gubernamentales y contribuyen a los estudios sobre la relación entre diversificación internacional y rendimiento al demostrar un lado oscuro de la globalización durante un evento de riesgo de cola.A pandemia do COVID-19 gerou crises econômicas e de saúde (“crises gêmeas”) em todo o mundo. Usando uma amostra de empresas de 73 países no período de janeiro a dezembro de 2020, examinamos reações dos preços de ações de corporações multinacionais (MNCs) e empresas puramente domésticas (DCs) à crise. Descobrimos que, em média, MNCs sofrem um declínio significativamente maior no valor da empresa em relação a DCs durante a crise do mercado de ações causada pela pandemia, com notável heterogeneidade nesse desempenho inferior tanto no setor quanto na região. A evidência do baixo desempenho de MNCs é robusta ao uso de retornos anormais, uma janela de crise alternativa, uma amostra pareada que leva em consideração diferenças nas características entre MNCs e DCs, especificações alternativas de modelos e proxies para multinacionalidade. Análises adicionais sobre o efeito das respostas do governo na diferença de valoração sugerem que respostas rigorosas do governo agravam o desempenho inferior de MNCs. Finalmente, mostramos que um sistema financeiro mais forte reduz retornos negativos de crise, especialmente sob respostas governamentais rigorosas, enquanto fatores reais, como a cadeia de suprimentos da empresa, investimentos em capital humano, pesquisa e desenvolvimento, agravam retornos negativos de crise. Nossas descobertas têm implicações importantes tanto para gerentes de MNCs quanto formuladores de políticas governamentais e contribuem para estudos sobre a relação entre diversificação internacional -desempenho, demonstrando um lado sombrio da globalização durante um evento de pequena probabilidade de risco.COVID-19大流行导致了全球的经济和健康危机（“双危机”）。我们以 2020 年 1 月至 12 月期间来自 73 个国家的公司为样本， 研究了跨国公司 (MNC) 和纯国内公司 (DC) 对危机的股价反应。我们发现， 平均而言， 在大流行引发的股市危机期间， MNC的公司价值相对于 DC 的下降幅度要大得多， 并且在整个行业和地区的这种表现不佳的情况存在显著的异质性。 MNC业绩不佳的证据对于使用非正常收益、替代危机窗口、解读MNC和 DC 之间特征差异的匹配样本、替代模型规范和跨国代理来说是稳健的。对政府回应对估值差距影响的进一步分析表明， 严厉的政府回应加剧了MNC的不良业绩。最后， 我们表明， 尤其是在政府采取严厉措施的情况下， 更强大的金融体系会减轻负面危机回报， 而诸如公司供应链、人力资本投资、研发等实际因素则会加剧负面危机回报。我们的研究结果对MNC的管理者和政府政策制定者等具有重要的启示， 并通过在尾部风险事件中展示全球化的阴暗面， 为国际多元化–绩效关系的研究做出了贡献。.

The disclosure of corporate environmental performance is an increasingly important element of a firm’s ethical behavior. We analyze how the legal origin of foreign institutional investors affects a firm’s voluntary greenhouse gas emissions disclosure. Using a large sample of firms from 36 countries, we show that foreign institutional ownership from civil law countries improves the scope and quality of a firm’s greenhouse gas emissions reporting. This relation is robust to addressing endogeneity and selection biases. The effect is more pronounced in firms from non-climate-sensitized countries, for which the gap between firms’ environmental standards and investors’ environmental targets is potentially larger, and in less international firms. Firms with a higher level of voluntary greenhouse gas emissions disclosure also exhibit higher valuations.

Using a new measure of shareholder inattention constructed from exogenous industry shocks to institutional investor portfolios, we find that firms with distracted shareholders are associated with a higher cost of debt. This effect is stronger for firms with more powerful CEOs, firms with higher information asymmetry, and those operating in less competitive product markets. Further testing suggests that the inattention-cost of debt relation is driven primarily by dual holders directly observing shareholder distraction. Our results are robust to controlling for inattention at the retail investor level and to other external monitors, including credit rating agencies, financial analysts, and Big 4 auditors. Overall, our evidence suggests that institutional shareholder inattention has an incrementally negative effect on bond pricing. This paper was accepted by Brian Bushee, accounting. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4593. .

We provide the first firm-level evidence of the relation between state ownership and debt structure. Using an international sample of newly privatized firms (NPFs) from 76 countries over the 1998– 2017 period, we find that state ownership is associated with a more diversified debt structure. This evidence is more pronounced for higher levels of state control, and is robust to accounting for endogeneity, using alternative samples, and controlling for other owner types. Additional analysis shows that our main evidence is consistent with the soft budget constraint, political, and social views of state ownership. Our results have several policy implications for financial system stability and the efficient allocation of financial resources in the economy.

Corporate Capital Structure and Firm Value: International Evidence on the Special Roles of Bank Debt

Using a comprehensive dataset of firms from 34 countries, we study the effect of institutional investors’ investment horizons on firm valuation around the world. We find a positive relation between institutional ownership and firm value that is driven by short-horizon institutional investors. Accounting for the interaction between investors’ investment horizon and nationality, we show that foreign short-horizon institutions, which are more likely to discipline managers through the threat of exit rather than engaging in monitoring made costly by the liability of foreignness, are the investor group with the strongest effect on firm value. Reinforcing the threat of exit channel, we find that the value-enhancing effect of short-horizon investors is stronger in the presence of multiple short-horizon investors, who are more likely to engage in competitive trading. The positive valuation effect of short-horizon investors is stronger when stock liquidity is high, which makes the exit threat more credible, and in firms prone to free cash flow agency problems. Overall, our results are consistent with short-horizon institutional investors, especially foreign institutional owners, affecting firm value by disciplining managers through a credible threat of exit.

Using data from 19 countries over the 1990–2015 period, we examine how economic policy uncertainty (EPU) affects accounting quality. We find that accounting quality, measured based on Nikolaev's (2018) model, increases during periods of high policy uncertainty. This relation is confirmed by the negative association between EPU and performance-adjusted discretionary accruals in a multivariate setting, and it extends to various alternative measures of earnings properties. We also find that the positive relation between EPU and accounting quality is more pronounced for government-dependent firms and firms with higher political risk. Additional analyses based on institutional investors' trading behavior, media freedom, and press circulation suggest that market participants' attention is a mechanism through which EPU affects accounting quality. Further, we find evidence that high accounting quality can mitigate the negative effects of EPU on corporate investment and valuation. Data Availability: All data are publicly available from sources indicated in the text.

Building on rational choice institutionalism theory and Williamson’s (J Econ Lit 38(3): 595–613, 2000) four-level social analysis framework, we investigate the influence of the informal institution of social trust on debt contract design in an international setting. Using a sample of non-U.S. firms that issue bonds in the U.S. debt market, we find that Yankee bond creditors impose fewer covenants on bond issuers domiciled in countries with a high degree of social trust. We further show that the inverse relationship between debt covenants and the informal institution of social trust is more pronounced for firms from countries with weak formal institutions, as well as for firms with poor corporate governance and greater information opacity. These findings are robust to endogeneity tests, within-country analysis, various empirical models and measures of trust, and alternative hypotheses. We also show that, while a lower level of informal social trust is associated with higher borrowing costs, this relationship weakens when formal covenants are added to the debt contract (i.e., a substitution effect). Our paper contributes to the international business literature by providing new insights into the role of informal institutions (social trust) in cross-border debt contracting.

An extensive body of international business research examines how cross-country variations in legal institutions influence corporate finance practices. Building on this literature, as well as the literature on capital structure and product market interactions, we investigate the effect of an important dimension of legal institutions – creditor rights – on the product market performance of highly leveraged firms. Using a sample of 37,422 firms from 60 countries over the 1989–2016 period, we find that strong creditor protection benefits less leveraged firms, but adversely affects highly leveraged firms by increasing the adverse responses of customers, competitors, and employees. The adverse effect of creditor rights on the costs of high leverage is more pronounced for firms in countries with developed debt markets and banking systems, but mostly insignificant for firms in countries with developed equity markets and low information asymmetry. Our study offers new insights into the international business literature and contributes to the debate on the role of creditor protection by uncovering a potential cost based on capital structure and product market interactions.

Event studies are widely used in finance research to investigate the implications of announcements of corporate initiatives, regulatory changes, or macroeconomic shocks on stock prices. These studies are often used in a single-country setting (usually the U.S.), but little work has yet been conducted in an international context, perhaps due to the complexities inherent in implementing cross-country studies. This paper explores the methodological challenges of conducting event studies in international finance research. We emphasize how scholars should choose an event, select the study period (short vs. long term), estimate abnormal returns, infer statistically whether the event under consideration produces a reliable price reaction, and explore the role of formal and informal institutions in explaining cross-country differences in price reactions. We also provide an extension of event studies to an important but less studied asset class in an international setting - the fixed-income market. We conclude by offering practical recommendations for researchers conducting cross-country finance event studies and identifying opportunities for future research. Given the increasing number of global events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit, and the Paris and Trans-Pacific Partnership agreements, we believe our paper is especially timely.Les études d'événements sont largement utilisées dans la recherche financière pour étudier les implications des annonces d'initiatives d'entreprises, de changements réglementaires ou de chocs macroéconomiques sur les prix des actions. Ces études sont souvent utilisées dans le cadre d'un seul pays (généralement les États-Unis), mais peu de travaux ont encore été menés dans un contexte international, probablement en raison des complexités inhérentes à la mise en oeuvre d'études transnationales. Cet article explore les défis méthodologiques de la conduite d'études d'événements dans la recherche en finance internationale. Nous mettons l'accent sur la manière dont les chercheurs doivent choisir un événement, sélectionner la période d'étude (court ou long terme), estimer les rendements anormaux, déduire statistiquement si l'événement considéré produit une réaction fiable des prix, et explorer le rôle des institutions formelles et informelles dans l'explication des réactions des prix à travers les réactions des prix. Nous proposons également une extension des études d'événements à une classe d'actifs importante mais moins étudiée dans un contexte international - le marché des titres à revenu fixe. Nous concluons en offrant des recommandations pratiques aux chercheurs qui mènent des études d'événements financiers transnationaux et en identifiant les possibilités de recherches futures. Compte tenu du nombre croissant d'événements mondiaux, tels que la pandémie de COVID-19, le Brexit et les accords de Paris et de partenariat transpacifique, nous pensons que notre article est particulièrement opportun.Los estudios de eventos son ampliamente usados en la investigación financiera para indagar las implicaciones de los anuncios de iniciativas empresariales, cambios regulatorios o choques macroeconómicos en los precios de las acciones. Estos estudios se utilizan a menudo en el marco de un solo país (normalmente EE.UU.), pero todavía se han realizado pocos trabajos en un contexto internacional, quizá debido a las complejidades inherentes a la realización de estudios transfronterizos. Este artículo explora los retos metodológicos de llevar a cabo estudios de eventos en la investigación financiera internacional. Enfatizamos cómo los académicos deben elegir un evento, seleccionar el período de estudio (corto frente a largo plazo), estimar los rendimientos anormales, inferir estadísticamente si el evento en cuestión produce una reacción fiable de los precios, y explorar el papel de las instituciones formales e informales para explicar las diferencias entre países en las reacciones de los precios. También ofrecemos una extensión de los estudios de eventos a una clase de activos importante pero menos estudiada en un entorno internacional: el mercado de renta fija. Concluimos ofreciendo recomendaciones prácticas para los investigadores que realizan estudios de eventos financieros entre países e identificando oportunidades para futuras investigaciones. Dado el creciente número de eventos mundiales, como la pandemia del COVID-19, el Brexit y el Acuerdo de París y el Acuerdo de Asociación Transpacífico, creemos que nuestro artículo es especialmente oportuno.Estudos de eventos são amplamente utilizados em pesquisas sobre finanças para investigar as implicações de anúncios de iniciativas corporativas, mudanças regulatórias ou choques macroeconômicos nos preços das ações. Esses estudos são frequentemente usados em um único país (geralmente os EUA), mas pouco trabalho foi realizado em um contexto internacional, talvez devido às complexidades inerentes à implementação de estudos entre países. Este artigo explora os desafios metodológicos na condução de estudos de eventos na pesquisa de finanças internacionais. Enfatizamos como acadêmicos devem escolher um evento, selecionar o período de estudo (curto prazo versus longo prazo), estimar retornos anormais, inferir estatisticamente se o evento em análise produz uma reação de preço confiável e explorar o papel de instituições formais e informais na explicação de diferenças entre países nas reações de preços. Também fornecemos uma extensão dos estudos de eventos para uma classe de ativos importante, mas menos estudada em um cenário internacional – o mercado de renda fixa. Concluímos oferecendo recomendações práticas para pesquisadores que realizam estudos de eventos em finanças entre países e identificando oportunidades para pesquisas futuras. Dado o número crescente de eventos globais, como a pandemia de COVID-19, Brexit e os acordos de Paris e parceria Trans-Pacific, acreditamos que nosso artigo é especialmente oportuno.事件研究广泛用于金融研究以调查公司计划公告、监管变化或宏观经济冲击对股票价格的影响。这些研究通常在单一国家环境 (通常是美国) 中使用, 而在国际情境下开展的工作很少, 原因可能是实施跨国研究所固有的复杂性。本文探讨了国际金融研究中进行事件研究的方法挑战。我们强调学者应该如何选择事件, 选择研究时期 (短期与长期), 估计异常收益, 统计推断所考虑的事件是否会产生可靠的价格反应, 并探讨正式和非正式制度解释价格反应的跨国差异。我们还将事件研究扩展到国际环境中一个重要但较少研究的资产类别 – – 固定收益市场。我们最后为进行跨国金融事件研究并识别未来研究机会的研究人员提供了实用建议。鉴于全球事件越来越多, 例如 COVID-19 大流行、英国脱欧以及巴黎和跨太平洋伙伴关系协议, 我们认为我们的论文特别及时。.

Prior literature shows that high leverage is associated with losses in market share due to unfavorable actions by customers and competitors. Building on this literature, we investigate the effect of collectivism on the product market performance of highly leveraged firms. Using a sample of 46 countries over the 1989–2016 period, we find significantly lower costs of high leverage for countries with higher collectivism scores. Moreover, we find that the impact of collectivism on high leverage costs is more pronounced for firms with high product specialization and with financially healthy rivals. In additional analysis, we find that collectivism helps highly leveraged firms retain employees and obtain trade credit from suppliers. Our findings thus suggest that a country's culture affects corporate financial outcomes by influencing the actions of firm stakeholders.

We assess the link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and government ownership using a unique sample of privatized firms (PFs) from 41 countries over the 2002 to 2014 period. We find that PFs have, on average, better CSR intensity than other publicly listed firms. Further tests show a nonlinear relation between residual state ownership and CSR intensity that depends on the trade-off between political objectives of the government and profit maximization objectives of private owners. In addition, country-level institutions affect the state ownership–CSR intensity relation, and PFs benefit from higher valuation and lower equity financing costs through improved CSR.

The debate over how firm stakeholder engagement is tied to preserving shareholder wealth has received growing attention in recent years, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. Against this backdrop, we examine the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and stock market returns during the COVID-19 pandemic-induced market crash and the post-crash recovery. Using a sample of 1750 U.S. firms and two major sources of CSR ratings, we find no evidence that CSR affected stock returns during the crash period. This result is robust to various sensitivity tests. In additional cross-sectional analysis, we find some supporting evidence, albeit weak, that the relation between CSR and stock returns during the pandemic-related crisis is more positive when CSR is congruent with a firm's institutional environment. We also find that Business Roundtable companies, which committed to protecting stakeholder interests prior to the pandemic, do not outperform during the pandemic crisis. We conclude that pre-crisis CSR is not effective at shielding shareholder wealth from the adverse effects of a crisis, suggesting a potential disconnect between firms' CSR orientation (ratings) and actual actions. Our evidence suggests that investors can distinguish between genuine CSR and firms engaging in cheap talk.

Building on Desai and Dharmapala’s (2006) complementarity theory on the relation between tax avoidance and insider diversion, we contribute to international research by examining the importance of tax avoidance to equity pricing, and the role that institutional environments play in shaping this link. Our theoretical framework generates two predictions. First, investors require higher risk premium compensation for their exposure to insiders’ diversion of corporate resources hidden by obfuscatory tax avoidance activities. Second, stronger country-level legal institutions and disclosure regulations mitigate this impact. Analyzing a sample of firms from 47 non-U.S. countries, we report strong evidence that equity financing costs rise when firms take more aggressive tax positions. Additional analysis implies that stricter investor protection institutions and disclosure regulations alleviate investors’ concerns about insider diversion, moderating the positive impact of tax avoidance on equity pricing. The results are robust to specifying alternative measures of tax avoidance and equity financing costs, as well as to addressing endogeneity. Collectively, these findings suggest that investors recognize the complementarity between insider diversion and tax avoidance in less protective environments. Our evidence has major implications for investors and policy makers.

Share repurchases have become persistent. Firms use cash flow as the primary source of capital to finance repeated share repurchases. This internal financing increases (decreases) retained earnings (paid-in-capital) in the capital structure and weakens the sensitivity of investment to cash flow. Our findings suggest that traditional explanations for share repurchases—to distribute temporary cash flows, signal undervaluation, or increase the leverage ratio—have lost power, and that share repurchases have become associated with a firm’s financial maturity as captured by retained earnings-to-assets, with mature firms displaying a long-term increase (decrease) in the sensitivity of share repurchases (investment) to cash flows.

We provide the first firm-level evidence of the relation between state ownership and debt structure. Using an international sample of newly privatized firms (NPFs) from 76 countries over the 1998–2017 period, we find that state ownership is associated with a more diversified debt structure. This evidence is more pronounced for higher levels of state control, and is robust to accounting for endogeneity, using alternative samples, and controlling for other owner types. Additional analysis shows that our main evidence is consistent with the soft budget constraint, political, and social views of state ownership. Our results have several policy implications for financial system stability and the efficient allocation of financial resources in the economy.

This paper investigates the relationship between national culture and cross-country variations in bank liquidity creation. We hypothesize that banks in individualistic societies create more liquidity because of risk-taking and overconfidence bias. On the other hand, a better access to soft information likely facilitates liquidity creation by banks in collectivistic societies as well. Using a sample covering 66 countries over the 2001–2014 period, we find that individualism is associated with greater bank liquidity creation. This finding is robust to several sensitivity checks. The effect of individualism is stronger for larger banks, pointing to the importance of soft information on bank lending. Additional analysis suggests that uncertainty avoidance and power distance are related to lower bank liquidity creation.

We examine the impact of foreign institutional investors on the prevalence of restrictive bond covenants using a sample of 959 Yankee bonds from 29 countries over the period 2001–2019. We find a significantly negative relation between foreign institutional ownership and debt cov-enants. This inverse relation is strongest for U.S. institutional ownership of foreign-issued Yan-kee bonds, and for covenants designed to mitigate such opportunistic behavior as claims dilu-tion and wealth transfers. We also show that the inverse relation between U.S. institutional ownership and restrictive debt covenants is moderated by country- and firm-level variables re-lated to corporate governance, information asymmetry, and agency costs of debt. Additional analyses show that U.S. institutional ownership has a significant pricing effect on Yankee bond investors by lowering the issuer’s cost of borrowing.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to economic and health crises (“twin crises”) worldwide. Using a sample of firms from 74 countries over the period January to August 2020, we examine stock price reactions of multinational corporations (MNCs) and purely domestic companies (DCs) to the crisis. We find that, on average, MNCs suffer a significantly larger decline in firm value relative to DCs during the stock market crisis caused by the pandemic, with their significant post-crisis recovery not fully offseting the decline. The relative underperformance of MNCs holds across all regions, except North America and Latin America & the Caribbean, and across all Fama–French industries, except chemicals, healthcare/drugs, and finance. We then examine the effect of government responses on the valuation gap and find that stronger government responses exacerbate the MNC under-performance. Finally, we show that a stronger financial system mitigates negative crisis returns, especially under stronger government reponses, while real factors, such as the firm’s supply chain, investments in human capital, research and development exacerbate negative crisis returns. Our findings have important implications for managers of MNCs and government policymakers alike and contribute to studies on the international diversification–performance relation by demonstrating a dark side of internationalization during a tail-risk event.

We find that Chinese CEOs with foreign experience tend to engage less in related-party transactions. This result holds through various analyses, including firm-fixed effects model estimations, propensity score matching, and instrumental variable regressions. The effect of CEO foreign experience is pronounced for companies in which the state enforces regulations (non-state-owned enterprises and firms without political connections). It is not evident when alternative governance mechanisms exist (independent boards and foreign shareholders). We find that related-party transactions tend to decline especially when the CEO experienced a country with more developed institutional environments. These findings highlight the importance of having CEOs with foreign experience in emerging markets.

We provide unique firm-level evidence of the relation between state ownership and stock liquidity. Using a broad sample of newly privatized firms (NPFs) from 53 countries over the period 1994–2014, our study identifies a non-monotonic association between state ownership and stock liquidity. The inverse U-shaped relation is consistent with trade-offs between costs and benefits of state ownership and suggests an optimal level of government shareholdings that maximizes stock liquidity of NPFs. We further identify that the inflection point from the cost/benefit trade-off is contingent upon characteristics of the nation's institutional environment., Highlights • We study how state ownership affects stock liquidity. • We identify a non-monotonic relation between state ownership and stock liquidity. • This relation is consistent with trade-offs between costs/benefits of state ownership. • The inflection point from this trade-off depends on the institutional environment.

We contribute to the corporate capital structure and bank specialness literatures by studying the effects of bank debt on corporate value. We apply novel methodology to almost 60,000 firms in 110 countries over 17 years—over 300,000 total observations. We find that bank term loans and credit lines are strongly positively associated with firm value, but only when employed very intensively—at 90% or more of total corporate debt. These effects are consistent with bank specialness at high-intensity levels. These findings support previously untested theoretical predictions that bank specialness would be stronger or exist only at high bank debt intensities. Our results hold broadly but are stronger for credit-constrained firms—small firms and those in low-income countries. Channel analysis suggests that term loans boost short-term firm performance more, while credit lines better promote long-run growth. The findings suggest future research topics and have policy implications, particularly during the COVID-19 crisis.

Using a comprehensive dataset of firms from seventy-nine countries, we document the incidence, determinants, and corporate policies of zombie firms from 2005 through 2016. Zombie firms account for roughly 10% of our observations. Using logit regressions, we find strong and robust evidence that countries with more efficient debt enforcement environments tend to have fewer zombie firms. In contrast, we find no evidence that the prevalence of zombie firms is related to national culture. We further find that zombie firms have conservative dividend and investment policies, aggressive leverage policies, and higher idiosyncratic risk. We conclude that zombie firms may impose a cost on the economy by impeding efficient resource allocation.

The debate over how firm stakeholder engagement is tied to preserving shareholder wealth has received growing attention in recent years, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. Against this backdrop, we examine the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and stock market returns during the COVID-19 pandemic-induced market crash and the post-crash recovery. Using a sample of 1,750 U.S. firms and two major sources of CSR ratings, we find no evidence that CSR affected stock returns during the crash period. This result is robust to various sensitivity tests. In additional cross-sectional analysis, we find some supporting evidence, albeit weak, that the relation between CSR and stock returns during the pandemic-related crisis is more positive when CSR is congruent with a firm’s institutional environment. We also find that Business Roundtable companies, which committed to protecting stakeholder interests prior to the pandemic, do not outperform during the pandemic crisis. We conclude that pre-crisis CSR is not effective at shielding shareholder wealth from the adverse effects of a crisis, suggesting a potential disconnect between firms’ CSR orientation (ratings) and actual actions. Our evidence suggests that investors can distinguish between genuine CSR and firms engaging in cheap talk.

Using a comprehensive set of firms from 57 countries over the 2000–2016 period, we examine the relation between institutional investor horizons and firm-level credit ratings. Controlling for firm- and country-specific factors, as well as for firm fixed effects, we find that larger long-term (short-term) institutional ownership is associated with higher (lower) credit ratings. This finding is robust to sample composition, alternative estimation methods, and endogeneity concerns. Long-term institutional ownership affects ratings more during times of higher expropriation risk, for firms with weaker internal corporate governance, and for those in countries with lower-quality institutional environments. Additional analysis shows that long-term investors facilitate access to debt markets for firms facing severe agency problems. These findings suggest that, unlike their short-term counterparts, long-term investors improve a firm's credit risk profile through effective monitoring.

Using 1,584 listed banks from 65 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, we conduct the first broad-based international study examining the effect of the pandemic on bank systemic risk. We find the pandemic increases systemic risk across countries. The effect operates through government policy and bank default risk channels. Additional analysis suggests that the adverse effect of the pandemic on systemic stability is more pronounced for large, highly leveraged, riskier, high loan-to-asset, undercapitalized, and low network centrality banks. However, this effect is moderated by formal bank regulation (e.g., deposit insurance) and ownership structure (e.g., foreign and government ownership), and informal institutions (e.g., culture and trust).