Research
Publications
Guo, Bing,David Perez-Castrillo, and Anna Toldrà-Simats (2019). Firms' innovation strategy under the shadow of analyst coverage. Journal of Financial Economics, vol. 131 (2), pp. 456-483.
About: We find that financial analysts encourage firms to make more efficient investments related to innovation, which increases firms' future patents and citations.
Sapienza, Paola, Anna Toldrà-Simats, and Luigi Zingales (2013). Understanding Trust. The Economic Journal, vol. 123(573), pp. 1313-1332.
About: We find that trust, as measured by the behavior of senders in a trust game, has two components: a belief-based component and a preference-based one. We show that World Values Survey-like measures capture mostly the belief-based component of a trust game.
Reboul, Jerôme, and Anna Toldrà-Simats (2016). The strategic behavior of firms with debt. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, vol 51(5), pp. 1611-1636.
About: We find that, upon deregulation, leverage leads large firms to increase output and small firms to increase prices. The difference in the strategic behavior of small and large firms is due to their different probability of going bankrupt and their financial constraints.
Working papers
Institutional blockholders and corporate innovation (2023), with Bing Guo, Dennis C. Hutschenreiter, and David Pérez-Castrillo.
Abstract: Institutional investors' ownership in public firms has become increasingly concentrated in the last decades. We study the heterogeneous effects of large versus more dispersed institutional owners on firms' innovation strategies and their innovation output. We find that large institutional investors induce managesr to increase spending in internal R&D by reducing short-term pressure. However, to avoid empire building and dilution, large institutional investors prevent acquisitions, which reduces firms' investment in external innovation. The overall effect on firms' future patents and citations is negative. By acquiring less innovation from external sources, firms reduce the returns of their investment in internal R&D, jeopardizing their total innovation output. We use the mergers of financial institutions as exogenous shocks on firms' institutional ownership concentration. Our findings complement the previously found positive effects of institutional ownership on firm innovation and indicate that the effects become negative when institutional investors become large owners.
Shareholder voting and disclosure in M&As (2023), with Duy Tan Do, Beatriz García Osma, and Fengzhi Zhu.
Abstract: We examine the effect of voting requirements in M&A transactions on managerial disclosure, information asymmetries, and voting outcomes. We find that voting requirements lead firms to provide more disclosure and in a timelier manner, including disclosure of the merger agreement, information on expected synergies, and post-merger earnings forecasts. We document a larger reduction in information asymmetries in deals subject to vote. More disclosure in the presence of voting requirements also triggers more sales from transient institutional investors. Lower information asymmetries and more transient institutional sales are associated with higher voting support and a higher likelihood that the deal is completed. Our results suggest that disclosure induced by voting requirements is informative and affects voting outcomes by changing the market valuation of the deal and the shareholder base. Evidence from falsification tests and a regression discontinuity design supports the causal interpretation of our results.
Do bank branches matter? Evidence from mandatory branch closures (2022), with Gabriel Jiménez, Alfredo Martín-Oliver, Jose Luís Peydró, and Sergio Vicente.
Abstract: We exploit a European Commission mandate to close down several bank branches in Spain to study bank lending behavior and real effects on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). We find that previous clients of a closed branch cannot easily borrow from another branch and experience a credit reduction of about 20\% on average. The reduction in credit significantly reduces these firms' likelihood of survival and has sizeable negative effects on the investment and performance of surviving firms.
Work in progress
Toldra, Anna (2016). Venture Capital Syndication and Firm Entry: Theory and Evidence.
Toldra, Anna (2017). Bankruptcy Law, Blockholder Control, and Capital Structure.