Creditor reliance on accounting-based debt covenants suggests that debtors are potentially concerned with board of director characteristics that influence the integrity of financial accounting reports. In a sample of S&P 500 firms, we find that the cost of debt is inversely related to board independence and board size. We also find that fully independent audit committees are associated with a significantly lower cost of debt financing. Similarly, yield spreads are also negatively related to audit committee size and meeting frequency. Overall, these results provide market-based evidence that boards and audit committees are important elements affecting the reliability of financial reports.

This paper examines the governance of Spanish banks regarding two main issues. First, does poor economic performance activate governance interventions that favor the removal of executive directors and the merger of non-performing banks? And, second, does the relationship between governance intervention and economic performance vary with the ownership form of the bank? We find a negative relationship between performance and governance intervention for banks, but the results change for each form of ownership and each type of intervention. Internal-control mechanisms work for Independent Commercial banks, but Savings banks show weaker internal mechanisms of control and the only significant relationship between performance and governance intervention that appears is for mergers. The Spanish Savings banks, with a peculiar form of ownership that, in fact, implies a lack of ownership, give voice to several stakeholder groups with no clear allocation of property rights. Nevertheless, their economic performance is not generally affected. Product-market competition compensates for those weaker internal governance mechanisms, and non-performing banks are not fully protected from disappearing.

Mergers and acquisitions improve market efficiency by capturing synergies between firms. But takeovers also impose externalities (both positive and negative) on the remaining firms in the industry. This paper describes a new equilibrium concept designed to explain and predict takeovers in this setting. We experimentally compare the new equilibrium concept to that of competing con-cepts in situations without and with externalities. Moreover, we examine the predicted dynamics of takeovers and outcome implications of those dynamics. Our experimental results support the predictions of the new equilibrium concept and provide implications for further empirical tests. 1.

Using a confidential version of the NLSY79, we estimate large effects of neighborhood social characteristics and job proximity on labor market activity. A variety of neighborhood social characteristics are associated with less market work. Social characteristics have nonlinear effects, with the greatest impact in the worst neighborhoods. Social characteristics are also more important for less‐educated workers. Exploiting the panel aspects of our data, we find that estimates that do not account for neighborhood selection on the basis of time‐invariant and time‐varying unobserved individual characteristics substantially overstate the social effects of neighborhoods but understate the effects of job access.

A discretionary policy-maker responds to the state of the economy each period. Private agents' current behavior determines the future state based on expectations of future policy. Discretionary policy thus can lead to dynamic complementarity between private agents and a policy-maker, which in turn can generate multiple equilibria. Working in a simple new Keynesian model with two-period staggered pricing—in which equilibrium is unique under commitment—we illustrate this interaction: if firms expect a high future money supply, (i) they will set a high current price; and (ii) the future monetary authority will accommodate with a higher money supply, so as not to distort relative prices. We show that there are two point-in-time equilibria under discretion, and we construct a related stochastic sunspot equilibrium.

This paper argues that the growing presence of a new type of man—one brought up in a family in which the mother worked—has been a significant factor in the increase in female labor force participation over time. We present cross-sectional evidence showing that the wives of men whose mothers worked are themselves significantly more likely to work. We use variation in the importance of World War II as a shock to women's labor force participation—as proxied by variation in the male draft rate across U. S. states—to provide evidence in support of the intergenerational consequences of our propagation mechanism.

We develop a general model of lending in the presence of endogenous borrowing constraints. Borrowing constraints arise because borrowers face limited liability and debt repayment cannot be perfectly enforced. In the model, the dynamics of debt are closely linked with the dynamics of borrowing constraints. In fact, borrowing constraints must satisfy a dynamic consistency requirement: the value of outstanding debt restricts current access to short-term capital, but is itself determined by future access to credit. This dynamic consistency is not guaranteed in models of exogenous borrowing constraints, where the ability to raise short-term capital is limited by some prespecified function of debt. We characterize the optimal default-free contract—which minimizes borrowing constraints at all histories—and derive implications for firm growth, survival, leverage and debt maturity. The model is qualitatively consistent with stylized facts on the growth and survival of firms. Comparative statics with respect to technology and default constraints are derived.

Many strategic interactions in the real world take place among delegates empowered to act on behalf of others. Although there may be a multitude of reasons why delegation arises in reality, one intriguing possibility is that it yields a strategic advantage to the delegating party. In the case where only one party has the option to delegate, we analyse the possibility that strategic delegation arises as an equilibrium outcome under completely unobservable incentive contracts within the class of two-person extensive form games. We show that delegation may arise solely due to strategic reasons in quite general economic environments even under unobservable contracts. Furthermore, under some reasonable restrictions on out-of-equilibrium beliefs and actions of the outside party, strategic delegation is shown to be the only equilibrium outcome.

We examine the operating performance of Thai firms after they go public. Overall, we find that their performance declines. We then explore the relationship between managerial ownership and the change in firm performance. We find that firms with ‘low’ and ‘high’ levels of managerial ownership experience positive relationships between managerial ownership and the change in performance (alignment-of-interest hypothesis), while firms with ‘intermediate’ levels of managerial ownership exhibit a negative relationship between managerial ownership and the change in performance (entrenchment hypothesis). Examining the operating performance of IPO firms from an emerging market and finding a curvilinear relationship between managerial ownership and the post-IPO change in performance represents two significant contributions to the IPO literature.