Purpose - This paper provides a systematic comparison of the level of business diversification in China and eight other large economies for the 2001 to 2005 period. We investigate reasons why Chinese firms are more diversified than companies elsewhere.Design/methodology/approach - We collect...

We examine the diversification patterns of almost all publicly listed non-financial companies in China during the 2001 to 2005 period. More than 70 percent of the firms in our sample are diversified. We document that patterns of diversification strongly depend on firms' political connections....

Where legal systems and market forces enforce contracts inadequately, vertical integration can circumvent these transaction difficulties. But, such environments often also feature highly interventionist government, and even corruption. Vertical integration might then enhance returns to political...

While private equity (PE) is expanding rapidly in developing countries, there is little academic research on this subject. In this paper I exploit two new data sources and employ two distinct empirical strategies to identify the impact of PE on Indian firms. I compare the investments made by one...

In a 2007 working paper, Alan Blinder assessed the offshorability of hundreds of U.S. occupations and estimated that between 22% and 29% of all U.S. jobs were potentially offshorable. This note reports the results of an exercise in which members of Harvard Business School's MBA Class of 2009...

Social responsibility investment (SRI) has attracted worldwide attention for its potential in promoting investment sustainability and stability. We developed a three-step framework by incorporating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance into portfolio optimization. In comparison...