Previous studies provide evidence of a negative relationship between staggered boards and firm value. However, these studies use specifications that do not allow for the heterogeneous impacts of staggered boards for different subsets of firms as predicted by theory. This paper presents more detailed hypotheses regarding how the impact of staggered boards should vary with the probability of takeover. Empirical findings using outside ownership concentration as a proxy for that probability confirm predictions that while for most firms staggered boards do have a negative impact on firm value, for a substantial and identifiable subset of firms staggered boards appear benign.

Using data on subprime mortgages from ten cities, I examine geographic variation in the effects of prepayment penalties, balloon loans, and reduced documentation on the probabilities of foreclosure and prepayment. Results indicate that across cities, reduced documentation is consistently related to higher probabilities of foreclosure, and prepayment penalties are consistently related to lower probabilities of prepayment. Prepayment penalties and balloon loans are more sporadically associated with foreclosures, and reduced documentation and balloon loans are more sporadically associated with prepayments. These results are robust to controls for several state antipredatory lending law provisions, whose effects are also tested.

We examine the relationships between ownership structure and both earnings and risk-taking among community banks before, during, and after the US financial crisis. We find that publicly-held small community banks had lower earnings than privately-held ones before the recession, but had higher earnings during and after the recession. Publicly-held small community banks exhibited similar risk-taking to privately-held ones before and during the recession, but greater risk-taking after. We also find that publicly-held small community banks de-risked more slowly than privately-held ones following the recession. Large community banks, on the other hand, show no consistent relationship between ownership structure and earnings, and a strong cyclical relationship between ownership structure and risk-taking. These findings expand our understanding of how community bank performance and capital accumulation behaves through different cyclical periods, and how ownership structure affects that behavior.

I. Introduction: significance of the problem, 546. — II. Meaning of the term, 547. — Usage in Commission opinions, 549. — Additional specific traffic, 550. — Additional traffic of specific type, 551. — Additional general traffic, 551. — III. Applications of the principle, 552. — IV. Theoretical analysis, 555. — V. Conclusion, 559.

J. Rose, W. Beaver, S. Becker, G. Sorter, Toward an Empirical Measure of Materiality, Journal of Accounting Research, Vol. 8, Empirical Research in Accounting: Selected Studies 1970 (1970), pp. 138-148