Using a large firm-level dataset encompassing 41 countries spanning from 2000 to 2019, and employing an instrumental variables approach to address endogeneity, we find significant positive peer effects on investments in innovation. Notably, these peer effects are more pronounced in emerging countries, where firms use peer benchmarking or mimicking to overcome institutional constraints. However, our findings suggest that the mechanisms driving imitative behaviour in innovation vary between developing and developed countries. Furthermore, we find that mimicking peer firms’ innovation positively correlates with shareholder value, particularly in emerging economies with weak institutions, where imitative strategies may be more beneficial. Overall, our study highlights the influence of institutions on how firms respond to the investment strategies of their peers and how such responses impact shareholder value.

PurposeThis paper sheds light on how appointing a lead independent director (LIDIR) affects a firm's commitment to climate change and to what extent environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance is affected by a firm's commitment to climate change in the presence of a LIDIR.Design/methodology/approachThe authors utilise ordinary least squares (OLS) and a sample of 12,236 firm-year observations in the United States of America (USA) over the 2002-2019 period to test the predictions. The authors also apply alternative research designs such as propensity score matching, Heckman two-step and instrumental variable techniques to address endogeneity concerns.FindingsThe authors find that a LIDIR representation on the board is positively associated with a firm's commitment to climate change. The authors also find that the association between a LIDIR representation on the board and a firm's commitment to climate change is more pronounced in firms with a combined chief executive officer (CEO) and board chair positions than firms with both positions separated. Additional analysis suggests that increased commitment to climate change in the presence of a LIDIR improves ESG performance.Originality/valueWhile the effect of a LIDIR on firm financial outcomes has received much attention, there is a lack of empirical evidence on whether lead independent directors are greener. The authors provide new and important contribution to the literature by investigating the relationship between an LIDIR representation on the board and non-financial outcomes from the perspective of climate change commitment and ESG performance. The findings may be informative to policymakers seeking to deal with climate change impacts on society to encourage the appointment of a LIDIR.

We examine how executive compensation relates to a firm's debt specialisation. We document evidence of a positive relationship between debt specialisation and executive compensation. In other words, executives extract large compensation when firms borrow predominantly from a few debt types. Specifically, debt specialisation reduces external debt monitoring of executives and exacerbates shareholder-bondholder conflicts of interest, increasing the tendency to extract large compensation. We then find that firms with high financial constraints and facing high product market competition extract larger compensation when debt is concentrated among a few debt sources due to the increased incentives to improve firm performance. Our results are robust to alternative proxies for debt specialisation and executive compensation and alternative models that deal with endogeneity concerns associated with the measure of debt specialisation.

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Using a large sample of listed firms from 72 countries over the period 1990–2019, we document a marked decrease in trade credit that is more pronounced for firms in developed economies relative to those in emerging economies. We find little evidence that firm characteristics drive this trend, as their relation with trade credit remains relatively stable throughout the sample period. We test several competing propositions and find that the listing decade, institutional factors, and financial development explain the downward trajectory in trade credit. We also report diminishing returns to trade credit that are higher in the US and other developed economies than in emerging economies. These results are robust to alternative definitions of trade credit and to controlling for several firm-specific and macroeconomic factors.

This study examines the effects of firm-level political risk on firm leverage decisions and speed of adjustment.We uncover that firm-level political risk has a negative impact on a firm's total and long-term leverage.We also find that firms facing high political risk tend to prefer debts with short-term maturity.However, firm-level political risk is positively related to debt specialisation, suggesting that firms are more inclined to adopt fewer debt types when they face high political risk.Further analysis reveals that firms with high political risk are associated with a faster speed of adjustment to target than those with low political risk.Our results are robust to endogeneity concerns and the effects of financial crisis.

Using a large sample of 17,747 firms from 44 countries, we find significant positive peer effects on corporate investment. Specifically, a firm increases its investments by 2% to 6% in response to a one standard deviation increase in peer firms' investments. Further analyses show significant within-country heterogeneity, as peer effects are salient for larger, mature, high-tangibility and high-market power firms with ample resources and latitude to respond to rival firms. In contrast, we find no significant cross-country heterogeneity in peer effects conditional on institutional quality, legal origin, and financial development, suggesting that peer effects similarly matter across countries. Our results further show that mimicking peer firms' investments positively affects shareholder value, with this effect being salient in good macroeconomic states. In summary, our study shows substantial industrial interdependence in corporate investments which might amplify positive and negative firm-specific shocks within and across industries and countries.

We examine the impact of religious beliefs on loan repayments in 770 microfinance institutions (MFIs) across 65 countries over the period 2006–2018. We find robust evidence of a negative relationship between religiosity and loan losses in MFIs. We also find that the relationship between religiosity and loan losses is stronger for MFIs in Protestant-dominated countries than in Catholic-dominated countries. Moreover, religiosity improves the operational self-sufficiency of MFIs through a reduction in loan losses. We find that religiosity does not improve the loan repayment behaviour of women borrowers, but it reduces the loan size per borrower. Overall, our evidence suggests that although religiosity reduces loan losses through religiosity-induced lender-risk aversion, it does not improve the loan repayment behaviour of borrowers. We also use several approaches to evaluate our results to the effects of endogeneity.

Using a large sample of 4,545 US firms over the period 1968–2018, we find robust and significant positive peer effects on corporate innovation. Consistent with the need to keep ahead or abreast of rivals, we document an increase in peer firms’ influence with product market competition. Our further analyses show interesting leader–follower interactions with firms following or adopting innovation policies of counterparts perceived or likely to have superior information. This finding supports the information-based motives of mimicking. More importantly, we show that adopting peers’ innovation policies is associated with improvements in long-term innovation outputs and product market performance. Our results suggest that peer effects are a critical determinant of corporate innovation in addition to other factors examined so far in the literature.

Agency theory suggests that entrenched managers are less likely to pay dividends. However, according to the catering theory, external pressures from investors can force managers to increase dividend payments. Hence, we test whether entrenched managers respond to investor demand for dividends and share repurchases. Using a large sample of 9677 US firms over the period 1990-2016 (i.e. a total of 80,478 firm-year observations), we test and find evidence that managerial entrenchment negatively impacts dividend payments. Our findings suggest that catering effects weaken the negative impact of managerial entrenchment on payout policy and that in firms with entrenched managers an increase in the propensity to pay dividends is conspicuous only when there is external investor demand for dividends. Our results indicate that while insiders and institutional owners might not necessarily favour dividend payments, firms respond to catering incentives when dominated by insiders but not institutional owners. Overall, our findings are consistent with the view that dividend payments are a result of external pressures to reduce agency problems associated with firms run by entrenched managers.

This paper examines the impact of corporate governance on capital structure dynamics. Using ordinary least squares regressions on 17,496 firm-year observations for 2,294 US multinational companies (MNCs) over the period 1990–2018, we find that MNCs with strong corporate governance use more debt than those with weak governance. Furthermore, strong corporate governance is associated with a faster speed of adjustment to capital structure. This relationship is more pronounced for MNCs than domestic companies, particularly for overlevered firms. We also use the two-part zero-inflated fractional regression model, instrumental variable, and structural equation model estimations to deal with any endogeneity concerns associated with the explanatory variables. Overall, our findings, which withstand a battery of robustness checks, suggest that improvements in corporate governance reduce the costs of monitoring for bondholders, resulting in increased debt financing.

This study explores the importance of financial constraints and product market competition on the share repurchase decision. We find that financially constrained firms are more likely to conduct debt-financed share repurchases. Financially unconstrained firms, however, tend to conduct debt-financed repurchases only when debt market conditions are favourable. We also find that the level of industry competition is a significant factor behind managers' decisions. High (low) industry competition forces financially unconstrained and undervalued firms to reduce (increase) the agency costs of free cash flows from overvalued debt financing. The implication is that firms in high-competition industries disburse excess cash through share repurchases. We find that this effect is strongest in periods outside financial crises.

PurposeThis paper contributes to the capital structure literature by examining the impact of financial leverage on firm performance and also the extent to which firm size and crisis matter in the leverage -performance relationship.Design/methodology/approachUsing data from 2403 Indian firms during the period 1995–2014, generating a total of 19,544 firm-year observations, panel econometric methods are employed to test the leverage-performance relationship.FindingsDrawing insights from agency theory and using Tobin's Q (TQ) as our main measure of performance, the authors uncover that financial leverage is negatively and significantly related to firm performance. The authors also observe that the impact of financial leverage on firm performance is lower for smaller firms than larger ones. Finally, the authors show that the 2007/08 financial crisis had no significant impact on the relationship between financial leverage and firm performance.Originality/valueThe paper provides fresh evidence on the impact of leverage on performance, particularly from the Indian context. This study is also among the first studies to examine the role of firm size and financial crisis in the leverage-performance relationship.

We examine the influence of peer firms on trade credit policies of listed firms in the United States. We posit and find evidence that firms mimic their peers in formulating trade credit policies. The findings are more pronounced for firms that operate in highly competitive product markets and an uncertain information environment. Our results show that firms not only mimic peers in similar circumstances but also imitate their more and less successful peers. We find that the benefits of mimicking peers' trade credit policies increase initially, but for firms that already maintain high levels of trade credit, these benefits diminish faster as the intensity of mimicking increases. Our results are robust to different methods of selecting peers, sampling, different proxies, and estimation techniques.

We study the impact of financial constraints on cross-market arbitrage. We find that financially constrained firms are more likely to conduct debt-financed share repurchases. Such repurchases tend to reduce investments and increase financial distress risks, especially when financially constrained firms are over-leveraged. Less financially constrained firms instead tend to conduct debt-financed repurchases only when debt market conditions are favourable. Moreover, less financially constrained firms tend to issue overvalued debt to fund the repurchase of undervalued equity. These results are in line with the cross-market arbitrage hypothesis according to which firms fund repurchases during good debt market conditions even though internal funding is available.