Guo, Bing,David Perez-Castrillo, and Anna Toldrà-Simats (2026). Institutional blockholders and corporate innovation. Journal of Corporate Finance, vol. 100, p. 103011.
About: We find that institutional ownership concentration reduces firms' acquisitions of external innovation thus mitigating the previously found positive effect of institutional investors on innovation.
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.
The value of connections in bad times: Evidence from venture capital (2024)
Shareholder voting requirements and voluntary disclosure in M&As (2026), 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. Our findings suggest that the benefits of shareholder voting in M&As extend beyond improved deal selection, operating through an information-disclosure channel that complements traditional governance and screening mechanisms.
Do bank branches matter? Evidence from mandatory branch closures (2026), with Gabriel Jiménez, Alfredo Martín-Oliver, Jose Luís Peydró, and Sergio Vicente.
Abstract: We study the role of bank branches in the allocative efficiency of credit. Exploiting an EU mandate requiring eight Spanish banks to close branches outside their core regions, we show that branch closures distort the allocation of credit across firms. Credit losses are U-shaped in firm productivity: they are concentrated among firms in the intermediate range of the productivity distribution, whose creditworthiness depends more heavily on the soft information produced by loan officers. This distortion is attenuated when firms can substitute for soft information through strong observable financials or pledgeable collateral. The resulting credit contraction has significant real effects, reducing firms’ total assets, employment, and sales, and spilling over to local economies through lower firm entry, higher unemployment, and population losses. Our findings highlight that some of the real effects often attributed to cleansing effects instead reflect distortions in the allocation of credit.
Cambio tecnológico, reestructuración bancaria y acceso a financiación de las PyMEs. Cuadernos de Investigación SANFI, 25/2019. Ed. Universidad de Cantabria.
Colección Difunde, n. 246, 2019. ISBN 978-84-8102-911-6 (with A. Martín-Oliver and S. Vicente).
Toldra, Anna (2016). Venture Capital Syndication and Firm Entry: Theory and Evidence.
Toldra, Anna (2017). Bankruptcy Law, Blockholder Control, and Capital Structure.