Corporate Finance.

• Position: Bureau News

The NBER's Program on Corporate Finance met in Chicago on March 31. The meeting was organized by Kose John, New York University, and Ivo Welch, NBER and Brown University. The program was:

SESSION 1: Geography and Corporate Finance

Augustin Landier, New York University, and Vinay B. Nair and Julie Wulf, University of Pennsylvania, "Tradeoffs In Staying Close: Corporate Decisionmaking and Geographic Dispersion"

Simi Kedia, Rutgers University; Venkatesh Panchapagesan, Goldman Sachs; and Vahap B. Uysal, University of Oklahoma, "Geography and Acquirer Returns" Discussant for both papers: Joshua Coval, Harvard University and NBER

SESSION 2: Capital Structure

Michael L. Lemmon, University of Utah; Michael R. Roberts, University of Pennsylvania; and Jaime F. Zender, University of Colorado at Boulder, "Back to the Beginning: Persistence and the Cross-Section of Corporate Capital Structure"

Discussant: Ivo Welch

Sreedhar T. Bharath and Paolo Pasquariello, University of Michigan; and Guojun Wu, University of Houston, "Does Asymmetric Information Drive Capital Structure Decisions?"

Discussant: Stewart C. Myers, MIT and NBER

SESSION 3: Regulation, Contracts, and Firms

Efraim Benmelech, Harvard University; and Tobias J. Moskowitz, University of Chicago and NBER, "The Political Economy of Financial Regulation: Evidence from U.S. State Usury Laws in the 18th and 19th Century"

Mark J. Garmaise, University of California, Los Angeles, "Ties that Truly Bind: Non-Competition Agreements, Executive Compensation, and Firm Investment"

Steven N. Kaplan, University of Chicago and NBER; Berk A. Sensoy, University of Chicago; and Per Stromberg, SIFR, "What Are Firms ? Evolution From Early Business Plans to Public Companies"

SESSION 4: Self-dealing and Dividends

Simeon Djankov, The World Bank; Rafael La Porta, Dartmouth College and NBER; Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, University of Amsterdam; and Andrei Shleifer, Harvard University and NBER, "The Law and Economics of Self-Dealing"

Discussant: Paul Mahoney, University of Virginia

Gerard Hoberg and Nagpurnanand R. Prabhala, University of Maryland, "Dividend Policy, Risk, and Catering"

Discussant: Malcolm Baker, Harvard University and NBER

Landier, Nair, and Wulf document the role of geographic dispersion on corporate decisionmaking. They find that geographically dispersed firms are less employee-friendly. Also, using division-level data, they find that employee dismissals are less common in divisions located close to...