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We look at the reaction to hedge fund activism of managers and shareholders in Japanese firms and explore the implications of our findings for agency theory.
We use a qualitative research design which treats the standard agency-theoretical model of the firm as only one possible approach to understanding corporate governance, to be tested through empirical research, rather than as an assumption built into the analysis. We find that Japanese managers do not generally regard themselves as the shareholders? agents and that, conversely, shareholders in Japanese firms do not generally behave as principals. Our findings suggest that the standard principal-agent model may be a weak fit for firms in certain national contexts.
Since the UK adopted the world’s first stewardship code in 2010, stewardship codes have proliferated across Asia. Given the UK Code’s prominence, it is tempting to assume that every other stewardship code preforms the same function as the UK Code...Read more
By the end of the twentieth century, the then-dominant literature on “law and finance” assumed that concentrated ownership was a product of deficient legal systems that did not sufficiently protect outside investors. At the same time,...Read more
In order to identify the relevant sources of firms' financing constraints, we ask what financial frictions matter for corporate policies. To that end, we build, solve, and estimate a range of dynamic models of corporate investment and financing,...Read more
Passively managed index funds now hold over 25% of U.S. mutual fund and ETF assets. The rise of index investing raises fundamental questions about monitoring and corporate governance. We examine the voice and exit mechanisms and find that...Read more