http://hdl.handle.net/10398/70 2013-06-20T05:36:58Z 2013-06-20T05:36:58Z Zhou, Haoyong http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8607 2012-12-21T09:04:02Z 2012-12-21T00:00:00Z

Essays on Family Firms Zhou, Haoyong The dissertation examines corporate performance and capital structure of family firms, contributing to the limited empirical research on family firms. Family firms are prevalent in national economies all over the world. It is the prevalence that makes family firms receive increasing attentions from academia. The dissertation consists of an introduction and three chapters. Each chapter is an independent paper. The first chapter is a joint work with Professor Morten Bennedsen and Dr. Markus Ampenberger. The version of in the dissertation will be published as Chapter 6 in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Entrepreneurial Finance by Oxford University Press. The second paper and third paper are single-authored papers. In the first chapter, we discuss the capital structure of family firms, with a focus on the debtequity mix. Two parts comprise the chapter. In the first part, we provide a literature review on existing theoretical and empirical research in the capital structure of family firms. The literature review shows that the most important theories to explain capital structure in family firms seem to be risk aversion, agency theory, and control considerations. We argue that risk aversion and control considerations have opposing impacts on the optimal choice of debt leverage of family firms. On one hand, controlling families of family firms are typically non-diversified investors with most of their wealth and human capital tied to the company and consequently family firms use less debt. On the other hand, controlling families want to maintain the control over their companies. This control consideration restricts the willingness to raise new equity outside the family and therefore often lead to a stronger dependence on banks and other debt instruments. The literature review also shows that evidence on capital structure choices of family firms is inconclusive. Large-scale evidence on private family firms is almost missing.

2012-12-21T00:00:00Z Fosse, Henrik Barslund http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8541 2012-10-11T09:10:34Z 2012-10-11T00:00:00Z

Empirical Essays in International Trade Fosse, Henrik Barslund The thesis consists of an introduction followed by three numbered chapters (independent papers). It covers topics in international trade, and in di¤erent ways the thesis investigates aspects of heterogeneity. The rst chapter is coauthored with Pascalis Raimondos-Møller. The version of this chapter is published in the CESifo Working Paper Series and serves as the nal background paper for the compressed journal article published in Review of Development Economics, May 2012. The second chapter is coauthored with Madhura Maitra, senior PhD student at Columbia University at the time. The third chapter is a solo paper. In the rst chapter we introduce a traditional macro model of trade and change the com- petitive environment by introducing state-owned enterprises. We also include heterogenous households to analyze e¤ects on the income distribution. The chapter focuses on Vietnam s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2007. Upon entry, Vietnam was granted an accession period lasting till 2014. During this period tari¤s would have to fall according to the accession agreement. This rst chapter evaluates this 2007-2014 trade liberalization by building an applied general equilibrium model and calibrating it to the Vietnamese data. The model pays careful attention to the fact that Vietnam has many state-owned enterprises that do not behave in a pro t maximizing way. The model simulations show that the WTO imposed tari¤ reforms will reduce the overall welfare level of the Vietnamese households. Moreover, the biggest loss of income will take place among the poor rural households in Vietnam. We propose other tari¤ reforms that both raise overall welfare and reduce income inequality.

2012-10-11T00:00:00Z Webber, Stuart http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8457 2012-07-10T12:06:00Z 2012-06-11T00:00:00Z

Corporate Profit Shifting and the Multinational Enterprise Webber, Stuart This dissertation analyzes ways in which Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) shift profits from one country to another to reduce their income tax expense. This is an important topic for a number of reasons. From a country’s perspective, its income tax rates and policies can have a significant impact upon its tax revenue, economic competitiveness, and the vibrancy of its economy. From the MNE’s perspective, income tax rates and policies determine a firm’s tax obligations, and thus affect net income and enterprise value. The dissertation examines several ways in which MNEs shift profits to reduce income taxes, and consists of five chapters. The introductory chapter reviews the economic evidence demonstrating firms shift profits from one country to another in response to tax rates. In the past two decades a number of economic studies have shown firms use tax and accounting techniques to shift reported profits to low tax jurisdictions, and that chapter reviews key articles that have demonstrated this. The second paper explains how MNEs finance international investments to shift interest income to low-tax jurisdictions. It reviews government tax policies in a number of countries that have been enacted to limit interest income shifting, and recommends an approach to control this activity. The third paper examines tax efficient supply chains, in which tax departments and supply chain organizations collaborate to site business operations to achieve supply chain objectives and reduce tax obligations. The fourth chapter analyzes how some U.S.-headquartered firms have moved their corporate headquarters from the U.S. to tax havens, to reduce their tax expense and avoid U.S. international tax policies. The fifth and final chapter examines new U.S. tax regulations that propose to value intellectual property transfers in the same way outside investors would, which the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) calls its “investor model.” It also makes recommendations concerning how the investor model can be improved.

2012-06-11T00:00:00Z Amore, Mario Daniele http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8451 2012-05-29T07:32:43Z 2012-05-29T00:00:00Z

Essays on Empirical Corporate Finance Amore, Mario Daniele The effect of corporate governance and managers on the value of companies has received great attention in the recent public debate. In the academic research, this increased attention has been associated with an effort to develop finer conceptual frameworks and analytical techniques to assess how governance and financial characteristics influence corporate policies and profitability. While theoretical models represent a successful approach under specific hypotheses, the econometric analysis of corporate governance and managerial characteristics has proven to be extremely challenging. Because governance and managerial characteristics are equilibrium outcomes largely determined by the firm itself, it is methodologically difficult to separate out their determinants from their consequences to infer causal effects. Since its infancy the empirical corporate governance and corporate finance research has faced this problem, which is often responsible for mixed empirical results. In my dissertation, I adopt a common methodological framework developed in the “program evaluation” literature to shed new light on the effects of governance and managerial characteristics on a variety of corporate policies and, ultimately, firm performance. In particular, I estimate a class of difference-in-differences models deriving the empirical identifications from policy changes that generate “quasi-natural experiments”.

2012-05-29T00:00:00Z