Gender, sexism, and war

We analyze a model of leader gender and crisis bargaining under asymmetric information. There are no essential differences between the sexes in their willingness to use force, but sexist leaders receive a subjective boost for defeating female leaders in war and pay a subjective cost for defeat. We show that this hostile sexism can lead to war for two reasons, first by offering sufficient private benefits to make peace impossible and second by influencing an uninformed leader’s willingness to risk war. We also show that (a) the effect of leader sex on disputes and war depends on the distribution of power, (b) sexist leaders may initiate disputes at less favorable distributions of power than non-sexist leaders, and (c) sexist leaders adopt bargaining strategies that make it difficult for women to cultivate and benefit from reputations for resolve, even in the absence of sex differences in the willingness to use force.

Domestic League Competitive Balance and UEFA Performance

This paper investigates the relationship between European football league competitive balance and the performance of that league’s participants in UEFA competitions. The evidence suggests that competitive balance measured using performance points fits the performance coefficients of countries participating in the Champions League and Europa League and that a reciprocal model fits the data best. The evidence suggests that marginal improvements in competitive balance can lead to increase of one-third a win for a league’s participants in the Champions League. The increased rewards for UEFA success suggest policies that promote competitive balance have both public and private benefits for clubs.

The Impact Of Performance Expectation Gap On Corporate Strategic Change—Evidence from Listed Companies in the IT Industry

Based on the panel data of Chinese listed companies in the information technology industry from 2007 to 2018, this paper uses a fixed-effect model to study the relationship between corporate performance expectation gap and strategic change and analyzes the moderating effect of private benefits of management control and equity incentive. It is found that the greater the gap between corporate performance expectations is, the lower the frequency of corporate mergers and acquisitions is, and the higher the frequency of corporate asset divestment is. Further research finds that private benefits of management control weaken the positive correlation between corporate performance expectation gap and asset stripping frequency. Equity incentive strengthens the negative correlation between corporate performance expectation gap and corporate mergers and acquisitions frequency, and the positive correlation between corporate performance expectation gap and corporate asset stripping frequency. Based on this, when enterprises carry out strategic change, enterprises should choose the direction of strategic change according to the degree of performance expectation gap, and promote the effective realization of strategic change by improving the governance of the board of directors and optimizing the management incentive mechanism.

Private Benefits, Public Vices: Railways and Logrolling in the Nineteenth-Century British Parliament

Vote trading among lawmakers (logrolling) can enable political rent-seeking but is difficult to identify. To achieve identification, we explore the rules governing voting for railway projects in the U.K. Parliament during the Railway Mania of the 1840s. Parliamentary rules barred MPs from voting directly for their interests. Even so, they could trade votes to ensure their interests prevailed. We find that logrolling was significant, accounting for nearly one-quarter of the railway bills approved. We also quantify a negative externality to society from logrolling ranging from 1/3 to 1 percent of contemporary GDP.

A Study of the Relationship between Corporate Governance and Non-business Real Estate

Corporate non-business real estate can be used for the private benefits of controlling shareholders, but is also likely to enhance shareholder wealth. This study explores the impact of corporate governance to address this contradiction, particularly the ownership-control disparity on non-business real estate. We further examine the moderating effect of foreign blockholders on the relationship, then conduct additional analyses on the relationship between non-business real estate and firm value. The results are as follows. First, the disparity has a consistently positive relationship with non-business real estate, which implies that corporate non-business real estate can be utilized for expropriation for the benefit of controlling shareholders. Second, the relationship between the disparity and non-business real estate is mitigated by foreign blockholders. Third, we find that non-business real estate has a negative relationship with firm value. This result implicates the inefficiency of non-business real estate and the possibility of agency problem. Forth, investment in non-business real estate is likely to decrease firm value, compared with investment in core business. This study revisits and extends corporate governance research in terms of non-business real estate by identifying the presence of agency problems and monitoring effects of outside blockholders.

Replacing Management or Not: Contract Renegotiation to Prevent Double Moral Hazards of Venture Capital Investments

During the venture capital development, replacing the management work team or keeping up the status quo is a key strategy choice for venture capitalist and venture entrepreneur about the long-term development of enterprise and the control right transferring. In fact, the contract designing focuses on the distribution of cash flow to encourage both efforts in order to avoid double moral hazard, and the strategy behavior has similar effects according to the developing condition of venture enterprise. In this paper, we consider both contract design and strategic behavior, regarding this strategic behavior choice as a motivator and combining strategic behavior with financial instrument options. The main innovation is to redesign and optimize the contract based on dynamic perspective, which will analyze initial contract designed to motivate both sides’ effort if a venture enterprise is in good state, and then renegotiate whether to replace the management work team or keep up the status quo according to the venture enterprise’s development state in the process of venture investment cooperation. The paper also puts forward some conclusions: joint effort of both sides can be motivated through strategic behavior choice and then lead to increasing the overall value of the venture enterprise; after the venture enterprise has gained private benefits in the early stage, the venture capitalist needs to make appropriate assignments and demisability in benefits to remotivate the venture enterprise’s efforts, aiming to further balance venture enterprise’s private benefits and the earnings redistributed by venture capitalist.

Staggered Boards and the Value of Voting Rights

This paper examines the impact of staggered boards on the value of voting rights (i.e., the voting premium) estimated using option prices. We find companies with staggered boards have a higher voting premium. Exploiting plausibly exogenous court rulings, we confirm that weakening the effectiveness of staggered boards decreases the voting premium. Given that the voting premium reflects private benefits consumption and associated managerial inefficiencies, our findings are consistent with the entrenchment view of staggered boards. Analyzing the cross-sectional heterogeneity in our sample, we find the entrenchment effect of staggered boards to be particularly pronounced for firms in noncompetitive industries and for mature firms.