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 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...

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 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...

This paper studies the effect on company performance of appointing non-executive directors that are also executive directors in other firms. The analysis is based on a new panel dataset of UK companies over 2002-2008. Our findings suggest a positive relationship between the presence of these...

We use longitudinal methods and universal panel data on 30,000 initially state-owned manufacturing firms in four transition economies to estimate the impacts of privatization on employment and wages. The results in all four countries consistently reject job losses and they never imply large wage...

We examine the dynamics of post-merger organizational integration. Our basic question is whether there is evidence of conflict between employees from the two merging firms. Such conflict can arise for several reasons, including firm-specific human capital, corporate culture, power, or...

In most OECD countries, only very few women succeed in reaching top executive positions. In this paper, the probability of promotion into VP and CEO positions is estimated based on employer-employee data on all Danish companies observed during the period 1997-2007. After controlling for a large...