Private Firms
Working Paper
Shareholder Illiquidity and Firm Behavior: Financial and Real Effects of the Personal Wealth Tax in Private Firms
We examine how negative liquidity shocks to households propagate to firms. We show that higher taxes on the home of private firms’ controlling shareholders are associated with higher dividend and salary payments from firms to shareholders and...Read more
(Forced) Feminist Firms
We explore how lowering labor market frictions for female workers affects corporate performance. Using the staggered adoption of state-level Paid Family Leave acts, we provide causal evidence on the value created by relieving frictions to...Read more
Public versus Private Equity
The last twenty years or so have seen a sharp decline in public equity. I present a framework that explains the forces that cause the listing propensity of firms to change over time. This framework highlights the benefits and costs of a public...Read more
Is it Worthwhile to Augment the Legal Protection of Public Debt Placed by Privately Held Companies?
We examine the effects of a law amendment in Israel in 2011 that imposes a set of minimum corporate governance standards on privately held firms that issue publicly traded bonds. Two main results emerge. First, consistent with US evidence, the...Read more
Post-Acquisition Performance of Private Acquirers
We provide the first evidence on the performance of private operating firms as acquirers. Private bidders experience greater post-acquisition operating per- formance improvements compared to public bidders. This effect is not due to differences...Read more
Financial Dependence and Innovation: The Case of Public versus Private Firms
In this paper, we examine the relation between innovation and a firm's financial dependence using a sample of privately-held and publicly-traded U.S. firms. We find that public firms in external finance dependent industries spend more on R&D...Read more
Contracting About Private Benefits of Control
The separation of control and ownership ? the ability of a small group effectively to control a company though holding a minority of its cash flow rights ? is common throughout the world, but also is commonly decried. The control group, it is...Read more
The Dutch Private Company: Successfully Relaunched?
This Chapter in a comparative book on private limited liability companies starts with an illustration of the former success of the Dutch limited liability company (BV). Next it addresses the competitive European legal environment within which the...Read more
A Primer on the Uncorporation
More and more companies appear with strange abbreviations behind their business name. Consider Chrysler Group LLC (instead of Inc.) or LVMH Montres and Joaillerie France SAS. Some even speak about the 'endangered corporate form' and...Read more
