Agency Costs, Mispricing, and Ownership Structure

Sergey Chernenko, C. Fritz Foley and Robin Greenwood

No 15910, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Standard theories of corporate ownership assume that because markets are efficient, insiders ultimately bear agency costs and therefore have a strong incentive to minimize conflicts of interest with outside investors. We show that if equity is overvalued, however, mispricing offsets agency costs and can induce a controlling shareholder to list equity. Higher valuations support listings associated with greater agency costs. We test the predictions that follow from this idea on a sample of publicly listed corporate subsidiaries in Japan. When there is greater scope for expropriation by the parent firm, minority shareholders fare poorly after listing. Parent firms often repurchase subsidiaries at large discounts to valuations at the time of listing and experience positive abnormal returns when repurchases are announced.

JEL-codes: G14 G3 G32 K22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cta and nep-reg
Note: CF
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published as With Sergey Chernenko and Robin Greenwood, “A gency Costs, Mispricing, and Ownership Structure,” Financial Management Vol. 41, No. 4, pp. 885-914, 2012.

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