Investors in open-end mutual funds can vote with their feet by withdrawing assets from or adding assets to these funds. This paper assesses the effectiveness of this market discipline mechanism by investigating whether voting with the feet prevents the abusive practices that led to the 2003–2004 trading scandals. The research results indicate that funds with higher flow sensitivity—that is, a higher density of vigilant clients—have lower arbitrage potential and fewer abnormal flows, which in turn implies less opportunistic trading. As a result, these funds have a lower probability of being implicated in scandals. These findings suggest that investor ability to withdraw assets from or add assets to the funds is an effective mutual fund governance mechanism. In funds with less sophisticated investors who cannot use this option, other means of governance are especially important.

Staleness in measured prices imparts a positive statistical bias and a negative dilution effect on mutual fund performance. First, evaluating performance with nonsynchronous data generates a spurious component of alpha. Second, stale prices create arbitrage opportunities for high-frequency traders whose trades dilute the portfolio returns and hence fund performance. This paper introduces a model that evaluates fund performance while controlling directly for these biases. Empirical tests of the model show that alpha net of these biases is on average positive although not significant and about 40 basis points higher than alpha measured without controlling for the impacts of stale pricing. The difference between the net alpha and the measured alpha consists of 3 components: a statistical bias, the dilution effect of long-term fund flows, and the dilution effect of arbitrage flows. Whereas the former 2 components are small, the latter is large and widespread in the fund industry.

This article documents fund usages of insider share pledge loans based on transactions data and subsequent corporate activities in Chinese firms. We find that the market has expanded 111 times since 2003, reaching 2.9 trillion RMB by 2017. The expansion is driven by share pledges for financing firms, including focal listed firms and other firms. Among transactions for financing focal listed firms (17.4 percent), 87 percent of the funds flow into the firms. Each 1 percent increase in controlling shareholders’ ownership is associated with a 7.8–11.7 percent increase in the likelihood of pledging shares to finance the focal listed firms and an additional 2.1–5.7 percent for financially constrained firms. The stock market reacts to transactions for financing focal listed firms with abnormal returns around 0.26–0.65 percent and an additional 0.29–4.37 percent for financially constrained firms. These patterns do not exist for share pledges for other purposes or by noncontrolling shareholders.

Social relationship and business connections create implicit benefits between borrowers and lenders. We model how implicit benefits and repayment enforcement costs influence credit allocation, cost, and renegotiation. The optimal solution illustrates that financing with implicit benefits may achieve lower financing costs, higher managerial effort, and better outcomes for both borrowers and lenders. This result is consistent with the continuing expansion of alternative financing despite formal financial intermediation, the rise of corporate insider debt, and joint ownership of debt and equity. The growing size and complexity of projects and changes in community relationships can explain expansion of financing with standard intermediation.

This paper offers a framework to understand informal financing based on mechanisms to deal with asymmetric information and enforcement. We find that constructive informal financing such as trade credits and family borrowing that relies on information advantages or an altruistic relationship is associated with good firm performance. Underground financing such as money lenders who use violence for enforcement is not. Constructive informal financing is prevalent in regions where access to bank loans is extensive, while its role in supporting firm growth decreases with bank loan availability. International comparisons show that China is not an outlier but rather average in using informal financing.

Previous theoretical and empirical studies suggest that CEOs' political connections are valuable to firms. We examine whether such connections become entrenched if the expected political capital fails to materialize and the firm lacks other types of political power. Using a sample of listed non-SOEs in China, we show that politically connected CEOs have a lower probability of turnover and cause a weaker turnover-performance sensitivity than non-politically connected CEOs. Further analyses show that these turnover patterns are not consistent with alternative explanations, such as superior managerial ability, being a member of controlling families or being promoted from the inside. The turnover patterns are less pronounced in firms with alternative political power, such as connected boards or being vital to the local economy. Following the turnover of politically connected CEOs, firm performance does not necessarily undergo significant improvement. Our results call for new theories that comprehend the real effects of political connections.

We examine cross-border private equity (PE) sponsored leveraged buyout (LBO) transactions in 43 countries in relation to creditor rights and other legal and institutional variables. Cross-border LBO investment is more common from strong creditor rights countries to weak creditor rights countries. Club deals are less common in countries with stronger creditor rights, and less common in cross-border LBOs. Premiums are lower in countries with stronger creditor rights, and among cross-border deals.