This paper uses a quasi-experimental framework provided by recent changes in Russian corporate law to study the effect of investor protection on the value of shares. The legal change analyzed involves the empowerment of preferred (non-voting) shareholders to veto unfavorable changes in their...

The paper proceeds from the assumption that the inequalities of opportunity between men and women on the labor market and in society overall tend to consolidate in the management bodies of large companies. The predominance of men on the supervisory boards of Germany's largest private sector...

The self-employed constitute a large proportion of the workforce in developing countries and the sector is growing. Different accounts exist as to the causes of this development, with pull factors such as high returns to capital contrasted with push factors such as barriers to more desirable...

In this paper we investigate the link between entrepreneurship and financial constraints. We develop a dynamic partial equilibrium model of an individual utility maximization that predicts that the person is more likely to start her business when financial constraints are eased. We test this...

This paper examines whether exporting activity matters for firm's price cost margins. The recent literature on exporting and productivity shows that exporters on average are more efficient than nonexporters. If that is the case we may also expect them to have different mark-ups. We investigate...

This paper analyzes the welfare implications of buyer mergers, which are mergers between downstream firms from different markets. We focus on the interaction between the merger's effects on downstream efficiency and on buyer power in a setup where one manufacturer with a non-linear cost function...

We study the effect of a merger in a dynamic high-technology industry-the videogame market- which is characterized by frequent introduction of new products. To assess the impact of the merger between two large specialist retailers in the UK, we perform a difference-in-differences analysis...

This paper empirically evaluates the price effects of the merger of two major book retail chains in the UK: Waterstone's and Ottakar's. We employ differences-in-differences techniques and use a rich dataset containing monthly scanner data information on a sample of 200 books sold in 60 stores in...

Previous work has shown that state-level antitrust enforcement activity may have impacts on entry and relocation behavior by U.S. firms. Significant state-level antitrust activity may be an indicator of a perceived adverse business environment and it is found to deter establishment entry,...

This papers studies the effects on service quality and consumer surplus of a minimum price which is fixed by a bureaucratic non-monopolistic professional association. It shows that the price floor set by a Niskanen-type professional assocation will maximize consumer surplus only if consumers...