Karl Lins

About

Dr. Karl V. Lins is the Spencer Fox Eccles Chair in Banking and a Professor of Finance at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah. His research primarily focuses on international corporate governance, capital markets, and corporate sustainability. He presents his research at academic and practitioner conferences worldwide, contributing to the understanding of these areas through his published work in leading finance and accounting journals. His scholarly contributions have been recognized with several awards, including the Best Paper prize at the European Financial Association meeting in 2012, the Best Paper Award by the Review of Asset Pricing Studies in 2014, the Blackrock Prize for Best Paper at the 2015 Australasian Banking and Finance Conference, the Standard Life Investments Finance Prize in 2016, and the FMA Global Finance Conference in Latin America Best Paper Award in 2019. Dr. Lins earned a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M University, an MBA from UCLA's Anderson School, and a Ph.D. in Finance from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was named the Outstanding Doctoral Student. He has extensive experience in executive education, having taught for institutions such as London Business School, INSEAD, Duisenberg School of Finance, and others. His teaching has been honored with multiple awards, including the Brady Superior Teaching Award and the ASUU Student’s Choice Teaching Award at the University of Utah, as well…

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Finance
• Political Science
• Business
• Social psychology
• Aesthetics
• Economics
• Monetary economics
• Law
• Market economy

Selected publications

• Social Capital, Trust, and Firm Performance: The Value of Corporate Social Responsibility during the Financial Crisis

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2016-01-01 · 688 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Does Family Control Matter? International Evidence from the 2008–2009 Financial Crisis

  Review of Financial Studies · 2013-07-22 · 390 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  We study whether and how family control affects valuation and corporate decisions during the 2008–2009 financial crisis using a sample of more than 8,500 firms from 35 countries. We find that family-controlled firms underperform significantly, they cut investment more relative to other firms, and these investment cuts are associated with greater underperformance. Further, we find that within family groups liquidity shocks are passed on through investment cuts across the group. Our evidence is co…

  PublisherDOI

• Shareholder Voting and Corporate Governance Around the World

  Review of Financial Studies · 2015-01-27 · 223 citations

  articleOpen access

  Using a sample of non-U.S. firms from 43 countries, we investigate whether laws and regulations as well as votes cast by U.S. institutional investors are consistent with an effective shareholder voting process. We find that laws and regulations allow for meaningful votes to be cast, as shareholder voting is both mandatory and binding for important elections. For votes cast, we find there is greater dissent voting when investors fear expropriation. Further, greater dissent voting is associated wi…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Trust, social capital, and the bond market benefits of ESG performance

  Review of Accounting Studies · 2022 · 201 citations

  Abstract We investigate whether a firm’s social capital and the trust that it engenders are viewed favorably by bondholders. Using firms’ environmental and social (E&S) performance to proxy for social capital, we find no relation between social capital and bond spreads over the period 2006–2019. However, during the 2008–2009 financial crisis, which represents a shock to trust and default risk, high-social-capital firms benefited from lower bond spreads. These effects are stronger for firms w…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Transparency, Liquidity, and Valuation: International Evidence on When Transparency Matters Most

  Journal of Accounting Research · 2012-01-30 · 180 citations

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT We examine the relation between firm‐level transparency, stock market liquidity, and valuation across countries, focusing on whether the relation varies with a firm's characteristics and economic environment. We document lower transaction costs and greater liquidity (as measured by lower bid‐ask spreads and fewer zero‐return days) for firms with greater transparency (as measured by less evidence of earnings management, better accounting standards, higher quality auditors, more analyst f…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Christian Leuz

  106 shared

• Francis E. Warnock

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  104 shared

• Darius P. Miller

  Southern Methodist University

  88 shared

• George Andrew Karolyi

  Cornell University

  74 shared

• René M. Stulz

  74 shared

• Craig Doidge

  73 shared

• Hannes F. Wagner

  65 shared

• Paolo F. Volpin

  53 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Finance

  University of California, Berkeley

  1995

• M.S., Finance

  University of California, Berkeley

  1991

• B.S., Economics

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1988

Awards & honors

• Best Paper prize at the European Financial Association meeti…
• Best Paper Award by the Review of Asset Pricing Studies (201…
• Blackrock Prize for Best Paper at the 2015 Australasian Bank…
• Standard Life Investments Finance Prize by the European Corp…
• FMA Global Finance Conference in Latin America Best Paper Aw…

Similar researchers at University of Utah

• Jeffrey L. Colesh-41
• Avner Kalayh-32
• Jonathan Brogaardh-32