Firm Rigidities and the Decline in Growth Opportunities

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Loderer, Claudio; Stulz, Rene; Waelchli, Urs
• 署名单位: Swiss Finance Institute (SFI); University of Bern; European Corporate Governance Institute; University of Rochester; University System of Ohio; Ohio State University; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2016.2478
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 3000-3020
• 关键词: Firm age; firm life cycle; firm rigidities; firm performance; corporate governance; COMPETITION

摘要

As public firms exploit their growth opportunities following their initial public offering, their assets in place increase, and they organize themselves optimally to operate these assets efficiently, which requires a more formal and less flexible organization than to generate new growth opportunities. Our theory predicts that, as a result of these inflexibilities, firms fail to fully replace their growth opportunities, so that their Tobin's q falls with age and they invest less as they grow older. With our theory, competition in the market for corporate control and capital markets monitoring increase the rate of decrease in Tobin's q, while product and labor market competition slow it down. We find empirical support for these predictions. We also find evidence that the decline in q is related to firm rigidities.