The paper reviews and assesses our understanding of the relation between cor-porate finance and corporate control. It questions the significance of the notion that entrepreneurs or managers give up significant powers of control in order to obtain external finance, arguing instead that (a) entrepreneurs or managers are reluctant to give up control rights for finance and (b) such exchanges are not credible because entrepreneurs or managers have "residual" means of reneging on such exchanges if they want to. This view leads to a reassessment of the role of the financial system as channelling funds from firms with surplus cash to firms with "surplus" investment needs rather than channelling funds from hou-seholds to firms. The paper asks what agency problems and biases this involves, with particular focus on the scope for structural change when cash flows and investment opportunities are not well correlated. The last part of the paper discusses the politics of corporate control with a view to the natural alliance between (i) the political system supporting incumbent management's claims to retain control and (ii) corporate management with discretion over the use of "free cash flow" to provide funding for matters of political interest outside of regular public budgeting procedures.
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Paper provided by Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim & Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim in its series Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications with number
98-43.
Length: 33 pages Date of creation: 15 Jun 1998 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:xrs:sfbmaa:98-43
Note: Financial Support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, is gratefully acknowleged. Contact details of provider: Postal: D-68131 Mannheim Phone: (49) (0) 621-292-2547 Fax: (49) (0) 621-292-5594 Email: Web page: http://www.sfb504.uni-mannheim.de/ More information through EDIRC
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RAFAEL LaPORTA & FLORENCIO LOPEZ-de-SILANES & ANDREI SHLEIFER & ROBERT W. VISHNY, .
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Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997.
" A Survey of Corporate Governance,"
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[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1998.
"Law and Finance,"
Journal of Political Economy,
University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(6), pages 1113-1155, December.
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Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silane & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1996.
"Law and Finance,"
NBER Working Papers
5661, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-De-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer, 1999.
"Corporate Ownership Around the World,"
Journal of Finance,
American Finance Association, vol. 54(2), pages 471-517, 04.
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Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.) This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.