Property rights institutions, foreign investment, and the valuation of multinational firms

Leming Lin, Atanas Mihov, Leandro Sanz and Detelina Stoyanova

Journal of Financial Economics, 2019, vol. 134, issue 1, 214-235

Abstract: We study the effect of property rights institutions in host countries, the institutions protecting investors from expropriation by host country agents, on the geographic structure and valuation of US multinational corporations (MNCs). We provide firm-level evidence that better property rights attract investment from MNCs. We disentangle the effects of the Stulz (2005) “twin agency problems” in the context of foreign direct investment and show that our results are not driven by legal institutions protecting investors from expropriation by corporate insiders. Further, we show that changes in the quality of property rights in locations where MNCs operate have material impact on MNCs’ valuations.

Keywords: Multinational corporations; Foreign direct investment; Property rights institutions; Investor protection; Firm valuation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F21 F23 G32 G38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:134:y:2019:i:1:p:214-235

DOI: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2019.03.001

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