Nilesh Sah

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga | Chatt · Finance and Economics

Multiple media reports and academic studies have indicated several benefits of having a gender-diverse board. However, corporate boards still lack female representation. Considering this gender imbalance, we examine the relation between short-selling and gender diversity on corporate boards and explain the underlying mechanism. We find strong evide...

We examine how base metal returns respond to various oil shocks applying Markov-switching models. We find that both consumption-led and speculation-led increase in demand for oil increase metal returns while an increase in oil supply decreases metal returns. However, the effects of oil supply shocks and speculation-led oil demand shocks are statist...

Several studies show that family firms avoid risky financial policies and value goals such as survival and reputation more than financial profits. Our study provides new evidence that extends the literature by showing that family firms exhibit conservative short-term investment policies by investing more in working capital. Notably, family firms ho...

Recent studies suggest that the conventional measure of cash holdings used to capture managerial risk-aversion may be inadequate. Using a new measure of physical cash, which adequately captures managerial risk-aversion, we deduce that female CEOs exhibit risk-aversion not only by maintaining higher physical cash levels but also by adopting risk-red...

We highlight the risk management activities of dual class firms by focusing on their use of foreign exchange (FX) derivatives. As opposed to single class firms, dual class firms engage in lower levels of FX hedging activities which may be driven by their long-term orientation and insulation from short-term market pressures. Furthermore, we document...

Recent studies have indicated that older Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) tend to be more capable, ethical, and risk- averse as compared to their younger counterparts. Keeping this in mind, we use a unique hand- collected data on corporate lawsuits to examine whether CEO age influences corporate litigation. After controlling for several important va...

Firms with dual class structure can suffer from poor corporate governance and may utilize strategies that can help them avert monitoring by outsiders. We find that dual class firms use less trade credit as compared to non-dual class firms. We believe that this behavior is motivated by their antipathy towards supplier oversight. Our results are espe...

Recent research makes contradictory claims regarding why female CEOs eschew riskier policies. Benchmarking risk aversion by how much cash is accumulated and managed, we find strong evidence of greater female risk aversion above the glass ceiling. Using propensity-score matching and difference-in-differences around CEO transitions to account for pos...

We employ 37,987 firms in 30 transition economies to investigate the relation between the origins of private firms and their financing patterns. We find that relative to ab initio (from the beginning) private firms, privatized former state-owned enterprises (SOEs) finance a higher proportion of their fixed assets from bank finance (especially from...

Several recent studies have used the upper echelons theory to explain the impact of personal traits of top executives on various corporate policies. In this, first of its kind, study we find that older executives invest more in working capital; take longer to convert inventories to cash; and pay their suppliers sooner. These findings are consistent...

The paper presents complexities involved in offshoring decisions and provides a comprehensive framework for making a reliable decision for offshoring. There is a need for a holistic approach to offshoring decisions. The paper identifies various drivers, categorizes them as revenue or cost drivers, and analyzes their impact on the offshoring outcome...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the association between litigation risk and working capital management. Design/methodology/approach The authors employ four different regression techniques (OLS regressions, regressions with industry and time controls, median regressions, and Fama Macbeth regressions) to study the relation betwe...

We use a unique hand-collected dataset on corporate litigation to empirically examine the relationship between litigation risk and investment policy. We document a positive relationship between litigation risk and total investments. Decomposing total investments into capital expenditure, and research and development expense, we find a positive rela...

Recent literature suggests that labor related issues can impact corporate innovation. In this study we hypothesize and find that firms with congenial work environments innovate more and have greater innovative efficiency. Our results also suggest that cash profit sharing and employee involvement have a positive bearing whereas union relationships h...

This study investigates the value of customer/supplier relationships in mergers and acquisitions. The findings indicate that targets (suppliers) with strong customer/supplier relationships obtain higher abnormal returns and higher merger premiums when compared to targets with weak customer/supplier relationships. However, targets with a strong conn...

There is an ongoing debate regarding the hiring and compensation of younger versus older employees. In this paper, we examine this question for Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in the context of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002. We argue that the increased complexities in the post-SOX era (regulatory, technological, and the ever-changing busines...

The paper argues that bond investors (and, implicitly large creditors in general), may not necessarily demonstrate the “Investors’ Smartness” that some previous studies attributed to large institutional holders, when it comes to pricing-in for economic shocks likely to occur in future. This study compares the credit-equity-macro economy inter-conne...

The results of this paper add significant contributions to the earlier findings that investigated various incentives to CEO’s, contingent on future returns. This paper chooses a long time horizon, and revisits the challenges of aligning CEO Compensation with Performance and Shareholders’ best interests in a dynamic and changing environment keeping...