The role of government shareholding in corporate performance is central to an understanding of China’s newly privatized large firms. In this paper, we analyze shareholders as agents that can both harm and benefit companies. We examine the ownership structure of 826 listed corporations and find...

This paper estimates the effects of Say-on-Pay (SoP); a policy that increases shareholder "voice" by providing shareholders with a regular vote on executive pay. We apply a regression discontinuity design to the votes on shareholder-sponsored SoP proposals. Adopting SoP leads to large increases...

In this paper we present and test a theory of how political corruption, found in many transition and emerging market economies, affects corporate governance and productive efficiency of firms. Our model predicts that underdeveloped democratic institutions that do not punish political corruption...

This paper studies the turnover of board of directors members in a sample of 72 companies listed on the Milan Stock Exchange during the period 1988-1996. We investigate whether board members change more frequently when company performance is poor, as the literature suggests, and whether and how...

The paper studies whether and how CEO turnover in Ukrainian firms is related to their performance. Based on a novel dataset covering Ukrainian joint stock companies in 2002-2006, the paper finds statistically significant negative association between the past performance of firms measured by...

We investigate the causal impact of equity market liberalizations in the period 1980‐1997 on sectoral export performance across 91 countries. The increased availability of external finance has boosted trade of industries that intensively use relationship‐specific inputs, and lowered exports...

We study entrepreneurs' start-up financing from banks and local financiers. An informal network, whose membership cannot be observed by outsiders, conveys the good signals it gets about the hidden types of network entrepreneurs to local financiers, which are then reflected in different loan...

With banking sectors worldwide still suffering from the effects of the financial crisis, public discussion of plans to place toxic assets in one or more bad banks has gained steam in recent weeks. The following paper presents a plan how governments can efficiently relieve ailing banks from toxic...

This paper argues that the level of financial services provision determines the risk management strategies among the poor. The paper estimates the determinants of the household’s use of one, two or all three types of microfinancial services applying ordered probit models and additionally...

This study examines the consequences of a pension fund investing in the stock of the sponsoring firm. Using a merger of data on pension asset holdings from IRS Form 5500 filings and financial data on the company’s stock from CRSP, two broad questions are addressed: First, what factors...