The 2005 split-share reform in China mandated the conversion of previously non-tradable stocks into tradable status. The reform was swift and changed investors’ability to trade corporate equities in a US$400 billion market. This paper examines the e¤ects of stock markets on …rms ’ real and …nancial outcomes. It does so exploiting multiple institutional features of the Chinese equity conversion program. We …rst examine a pilot trial conducted at the beginning of the reform, which we are able to replicate using the same data and selection criteria that was used by policy-makers. We also take advantage of the staggered nature of the conversion schedule used in the second phase of the reform, whereby over one thousand …rms converted their shares at di¤erent times within a government-dictated window. These various wrinkles produce counterfactuals against which to gauge the economic importance of secondary equity trading. Using a time-varying treatment estimation approach, we identify increases in corporate pro…tability, investment, value, and productivity as shares start to trade freely in organized exchanges. We also identify changes in …rms’propensity to issue new shares and engage in merger deals, as well as changes in their dividend and capital structure policies. Our …ndings provide new insights on the role of stock markets in shaping corporate activity

Golden parachutes (GPs) have attracted substantial attention from investors and public officials for more than two decades. We find that GPs are associated with higher expected acquisition premiums and that this association is at least partly due to the effect of GPs on executive incentives. However, we also find that firms that adopt GPs experience negative abnormal stock returns both during and subsequent to the period surrounding their adoption. This finding raises the possibility that even though GPs facilitate some value-increasing acquisitions, they do have, on average, an overall negative effect on shareholder wealth; this effect could be due to GPs weakening the force of the market for control and thereby increasing managerial slack, and/or to GPs making it attractive for executives to go along with some value-decreasing acquisitions that do not serve shareholders' long-term interests. Our findings have significant implications for ongoing debates on GPs and suggest the need for additional work identifying the types of GPs that drive the identified correlation between GPs and reduced shareholder value.