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Do courts matter for firm value? Evidence from the U.S. court system

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  • Colonnello, Stefano
  • Herpfer, Christoph

Abstract

We estimate the impact of U.S. state court characteristics on firm value by exploiting a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that exogenously changed firms‘ exposure to different courts. We find that increased exposure to more business-friendly courts is associated with positive announcement returns. We find no such association for objective court quality. We confirm that this U.S. Supreme Court ruling impacted firm value through the legal environment channel. We show that this ruling reduced the ability of affected firms to remove cases from certain state courts, and we show that announcement returns are stronger for firms that have high litigation exposure.

Suggested Citation

  • Colonnello, Stefano & Herpfer, Christoph, 2018. "Do courts matter for firm value? Evidence from the U.S. court system," IWH Discussion Papers 1/2016, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), revised 2018.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:iwhdps:iwh-1-16
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    courts; litigation; governance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance
    • G38 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • K40 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - General

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