Institutional and Legal Context in Natural Experiments: The Case of State Antitakeover Laws

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Karpoff, Jonathan M.; Wittry, Michael D.
• 署名单位: University of Washington; University of Washington Seattle
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF FINANCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1082
• DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12600
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 657-714
• 关键词: sarbanes-oxley act; corporate governance; STAGGERED BOARDS; TAKEOVER LEGISLATION; SHAREHOLDER WEALTH; capital structure; Firm value; Information environment; MANAGERIAL ENTRENCHMENT; SYMPOSIUM PARTICIPANTS

摘要

We argue and demonstrate empirically that a firm's institutional and legal context has first-order effects in tests that use state antitakeover laws for identification. A priori, the size and direction of a law's effect on a firm's takeover protection depends on (i) other state antitakeover laws, (ii) preexisting firm-level takeover defenses, and (iii) the legal regime as reflected by important court decisions. In addition, (iv) state antitakeover laws are not exogenous for many easily identifiable firms. We show that the inferences from nine prior studies related to nine different outcome variables change substantially when we include controls for these considerations.