Corporate Finance

Institutional investors improve the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance of small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Our difference-in-differences framework shows that the backing from private equity and venture capital funds leads to an increase in SMEs' externally validated ESG scores compared to their matched non-investor-backed peers. Consistent with "ESG-as-insurance" theory, the ESG performance of SMEs with a higher probability of failure is more likely to benefit from the backing of institutional investors. This positive effect is heterogeneous; while SMEs with high ex-ante ESG performance tend to further improve their ESG performance following institutional investor backing, SMEs with low ex-ante ESG performance are unlikely to implement any improvements. Entrepreneurial finance seems to help sustainable entrepreneurs develop into "sustainability champions," while neglecting the betterment of non-sustainable SMEs.

This paper shows evidence of a positive relationship between institutional dual holders, who hold both equity and debt in a firm, and voluntary greenhouse gas (GHG) emission disclosure. Considering dual holders as particularly risk-sensitive institutional investors, we docu-ment that voluntary GHG emission disclosure improvements are motivated by not only cli-mate-conscious but also risk-related considerations. The positive effect of institutional dual ownership is more pronounced when firms face severe environmental risks, where disclosure enables explanations and prevents exaggerated stakeholder reactions. The impact of dual ownership is also stronger in firms with poor information environments, where dual holders exploit their salient monitoring capacity from gathering information from their public equity and private debt holdings. Supporting our risk-based explanation, voluntary GHG emission disclosure reduces the cost of equity and increases firm valuation in firms with higher dual ownership.

We study the role of social trust in the equity allocation decisions of global investors using a large sample of institutionally managed portfolios of 8,088 investors from 33 countries over the 2000 through 2017 period. The negative relationship between social trust and foreign bias suggests that institutional investors from high-social trust countries are less prone to underinvesting in foreign equity. Our results provide credence to an information-based explanation, indicating that social trust reduces foreign bias by compensating for the lack of information about foreign stock markets. Moreover, the effect of social trust on foreign bias is stronger if host-country institutions are weak, while it vanishes when the host country is characterized by strong institutions. The informal institution of social trust compensates for the lack of well-functioning formal country-level institutions in international portfolio decisions. Finally, the allocation effect resulting from social trust is different from “blind” trust. The portfolios of high-trust investors exhibit higher cross-country diversification and an enhanced portfolio risk-return trade-off.

We examine 17,207 U.S. mergers and acquisitions by public firms over the 1980–2019 period and find that the acquirer abnormal announcement returns are higher for firms held by more central investors in the network of active institutional blockholdings. This finding is robust to firm and deal characteristics, and it also extends to alternative network and return measures. To provide evidence on causality, we exploit extreme industry returns that lead to plausibly exogenous variation in investors’ monitoring ability. The positive effect of blockholder centrality on acquirer abnormal announcement returns only exists in information-sensitive (i.e., private) deals and only among institutions that have a comparative advantage in exploiting monitoring information. Our findings suggests that institutional investors obtain an information advantage through the network, which increases their monitoring ability.

Using a large international dataset that quantifies corporate environmental costs, we analyze the influence of institutional investor ownership, particularly investment horizon and investor origin, on the monetized environmental impact generated by their investee firms. Institutional investor ownership is negatively related to corporate environmental costs. This effect is driven by long-term foreign institutional investors, especially investors from advanced economies. Foreign institutional investors transfer higher norms and standards from their home countries to their investee firms abroad. Corporate environmental costs are negatively correlated with firm valuation and positively correlated with the firm’s cost of equity. To the extent that corporate environmental costs are not already reflected in conventional ESG ratings, our results shed new light on the role of institutional investors in shaping corporate environmental impact.

Evidence shows that social network structures drive important economic outcomes. Building on social network theory, this study is the first to analyse the impact of team networks on venture success. Using information about team affiliations for a sample of token-financed startups, we model networks based on team interlocks across firms. Ventures with well-connected teams exhibit higher market valuations and higher token market liquidity. These effects seem to be driven by network-induced information and communication advantages. Specifically, we show that networks matter most when publicly available information is limited. The findings remain robust after controlling for non-team networks and endogeneity.

We document high economy-wide correlations between the Equity Risk Premium (ERP) and the aggregate volume (rho=-0.69) and value (rho=-0.75) of patenting activity by public firms in the United States over the 1977-2018 period, contradicting Schumpeter's (1939) opportunity-costs hypothesis of countercyclical inventive productivity in a representative sample. We propose a ''hurdle-rate theory of inventive procyclicality'' and offer supportive evidence at the firm level. High-ERP periods stifle innovation because many R&D projects do not pass corporate budgeting decisions when discount rates are high. Consistent evidence suggests that the hurdle-rate effect is less pronounced in firms with financial slack, institutional ownership with long-term orientation, and weak product-market competition. In an attempt to reconcile the procyclical evidence with Schumpeter's countercyclical theory, we show that firms engaging in exploratory search suffer less during high-ERP episodes than those focusing on exploitative search, and patents developed during high-ERP periods have a higher technological impact and receive significantly more forward citations. Finally, we exploit the staggered variation in state-level R&D tax credits in difference-in-differences analyses to establish a causal link between the ERP and patent value.

Crypto funds (CFs) are a growing intermediary in cryptocurrency markets. We evaluate CF performance using metrics based on alphas, value at risk, lower partial moments, and maximum drawdown. The performance of actively managed CFs is heterogeneous: While the average fund in our sample does not outperform the overall cryptocurrency market, there seem to be some few funds with superior skills. Given the non-normal nature of fund returns, the choice of the performance measure affects the rank orders of funds. Compared to the Sharpe ratio, the most commonly applied metric in the asset management practice, performance measures based on alphas and maximum drawdown lead to diverging fund rankings. Depending on their ranking order of preferences, CF investors should consider a bundle of metrics for fund selection and performance measurement.