Agency Costs, Mispricing, and Ownership Structure
49 Pages Posted: 13 Nov 2009 Last revised: 13 Apr 2010
There are 2 versions of this paper
Agency Costs, Mispricing, and Ownership Structure
Agency Costs, Mispricing, and Ownership Structure
Date Written: April 2, 2010
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.
Keywords: Ownership, Agency Costs, Mispricing
JEL Classification: G14, G32
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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