Essays in corporate governance and social capital

These essays study the effects of corporate governance and social capital on firm characteristics such as firm performance and firm value. The first essay addresses with the relationships between ownership concentration, financial performance, and economic characteristics of Colombian firms. Using panel data for 144 firms that issue securities in the Colombian economy between the years 1995 and 2003, we study the determinants of ownership and accounting performance. We find a strong inverse U-shaped effect of earnings variation on ownership concentration, and a U-shaped effect of earnings variation on accounting performance. Additionally, accounting performance positively affects ownership concentration, and ownership concentration affects accounting performance, although the tendency of its effect is not clear. After controlling for endogeneity, we find that ownership concentration has a nonmonotonic effect on accounting performance, with an initial negative effect and, as the ownership becomes highly concentrated, a positive effect. The second essay is a follow-up of the first essay for a sample of Latin American firms. The essay studies the effects of ownership concentration on the accounting returns for a panel of 532 publicly listed Latin-American firms between the years 1999 and 2003. The firms are from five countries: Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Peru and Venezuela. The third essay presents a theoretical model of cooperation and agency costs focusing in the extent of cooperation among the manager and the investors, an important variable absent in agency cost analyses. Two types of cooperation are studied: (1) generalized cooperation, a behavior close to social capital, a comprehensive concept that characterizes the inclination to cooperate among the individuals of a given society; and (2) discriminating cooperation, a concept close to cooperation with relatives. These types of cooperation affect managerial private benefits differently; while generalized cooperation reduces agency costs, discriminating cooperation may enlarge them, until the manager becomes highly close toward his cooperating investor. The fourth essay presents evidence about the impact of cooperation on firms' characteristics. Social capital has its basis in the social cohesion built across generations. Fragmented societies likely score low in social capital, a deficiency that hinders their development. Moreover, some forms of social capital can have negative consequences: when cooperation is oriented to rent seeking or when it is selective. Some empirical tests associate social capital with economic growth, but there is no evidence of its impact at firm levels. The essay tries to fill that void. With a sample of firms from forty four countries, we find that social capital is positively associated with firm value, and has a U-shaped effect on firm size. Additionally, a form of selective social capital, family cooperation, has a U-shaped effect on firm value and an inverse U-shaped effect on firm size. While the U-shaped effect of social capital on firm size was unexpected, at least the negative slope, all additional effects present the expected theoretical shapes, which are the result of two contrasting forces: the agency cost of managerial private benefits and focused or generalized cooperation. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...