This Paper studies the incentives for transparency under different forms of corporate governance in a context of product market competition. This Paper endogenizes the governance and financial structure of firms and determines a strategic decision on the degree of transparency in a context of...

Legislation affects corporate governance and the return to human and financial capital. We allow the preference of a political majority to determine both the governance structure and the extent of labour rents. In a society where median voters have relatively more at stake in the form of human...

Equity carve outs, the partial listing of a corporate subsidiary, appear to be transitory arrangements, usually dissolved within a few years by either a complete sale or a buy back. Why do firms perform expensive listings just to reverse them thereafter? We interpret carve outs as strategic...

This paper studies product market competition under a strategic transparency decision. Dominant investors can influence information collection in the financial market, and thereby corporate transparency, by affecting market liquidity or the cost of information collection. More transparency on a...

The paper seeks to explain the huge cross country variation in private pension funding, shaped by historical choice made when universal pension systems were created after the Great Depression. According to Perotti and von Thadden (2006), large inflationary shocks due to war damage devastated...

We develop a model of endogenous lobby formation in which wealth inequality and political accountability undermine entry and financial development. Incumbents seek a low level of effective investor protection to prevent potential entrants from raising capital. They succeed because they can...

We analyse politically motivated privatization design in a bipartisan environment where politicians lack commitment power. Suppose the median class voters a priori favour redistributive policies. If the privatization programme succeeds in allocating enough shares to these citizens, they become...

We study the governance role of Russian Financial-Industrial Groups (FIG) and their impact on financing of investment. We compare member firms of a group with a control set of large firms categorized by dispersed ownership or/and management and employee control. We find that investment is...

Economic theory points to five parties active in disciplining management of poorly performing firms: holders of large share blocks, acquirers of new blocks, bidders in take-overs, non-executive directors, and investors during periods of financial distress. This Paper reports the first...