In this paper, we show that ownership structures vary considerably across Europe, and that the dominant form of ownership is not necessarily the most efficient one. These findings are in contradiction to similar research based on US samples. The results also demonstrate that firms without a...

We study rights offerings using a sample of 8,238 rights offers announced during 1995-2008 in 69 countries. Although shareholders prefer having the option to trade rights, issuers deliberately restrict tradability in 38% of the offerings. We argue that firms restrict rights trading to avoid the...

This paper shows how separation of ownership and control may arise as a response to overload costs, despite agency costs, and how conglomerates arise as solution to information asymmetries in capital markets. In a context where entrepreneurs have the ability to run projects and improve their...

We find that institutional ownership in publicly traded companies is associated with more innovation (measured by cite-weighted patents). To explore the mechanism through which this link arises, we build a model that nests the lazy-manager hypothesis with career-concerns, where institutional...

Theoretical predictions of the effect of TFP growth on employment are ambiguous, and depend on the extent to which new technology is embodied in new jobs. We estimate a model for employment, wages and investment with an annual panel for the United States, Japan and Europe and find that TFP...

The paper provides a quantitative analysis of the armed confrontation that took place in Greece between the Communist Party and the Centre-Right Government during 1946-1949. Using monthly data for battle casualties a dynamic Lotka-Volterra framework is estimated, pointing to the existence of a...

At the Lisbon summit of 2000 the European Union (EU) set an agenda for making Europe the most competitive economy in the world. The targets that were set then are unlikely to be achieved. European countries need to concentrate on change in the lower productivity, more labour-intensive service...

While recent research has explored the phenomenon of drug parallel trade in regulated environments such as the European Union (EU), or the European Economic Area, little is known about the mechanisms that explain its origin or the role of the distribution chain in exporting and importing...

We use a new industry-level dataset to quantify the role of ICT in explaining productivity growth in the UK, 1970-2000. The dataset is for 34 industries covering the whole economy (31 in the market sector). Using growth accounting, we find that ICT capital played an increasingly important, and...