Many developing and emerging markets have high degrees of state bank ownership. In addition, the recent global financial crisis has led to significant state ownership of banking assets in developed countries such as the United Kingdom. These observations beg the question of whether the...

This paper surveys recent advances in empirical studies of the monetary transmission mechanism (MTM), with special attention to Central and Eastern Europe. In particular, while laying out the functioning of the separate channels in the MTM, it explores possible interrelations between different...

The Bulgarian monetary system was established, immediately after independence. Having experienced it already under Ottoman rule, newly independent Bulgaria adopted the bimetallic standard. Without being a member of the Latin Monetary Union, it tried broadly to follow the principles of the...

Due to the persistence of relatively soft budget constraints and poor government credibility, the survival strategy of Romanian state-sector firms means eschewing profit maximization in the short run in favor of insider utility maximization. This takes the form of attempts at both reducing...

In this paper we analyze the evolution of firm financial efficiency in the Czech Republic. Using a large panel of more than 400,000 Czech firm/years we study whether firms fully utilize their resources, how firm financial efficiency evolves over time, and how firm financial efficiency is...

We use the stochastic frontier approach to estimate the impact of firm characteristics on investment decisions of Indian firms during the 1997-2006 period. The use of the stochastic frontier approach allows us to define the (unobserved) optimum investment that is consistent with a firm's...

Newly released data on corporate governance and disclosure practices reveal wide within-country variation, with the variation increasing as legal environment gets less investor friendly. This paper examines why firms practice high-quality governance when law does not require it; firm attributes...

We use new firm-level data to examine the effects of spinoffs and privatization on corporate performance in a rapidly emerging market economy. Unlike the existing literature, which analyzes spinoffs almost exclusively in advanced economies, we control for accompanying ownership changes and the...

The initial view of the advantages of ownership concentration in joint stock companies was determined by the concern about the opportunistic managerial behavior. The growing importance of knowledge and human capital in the operation of firms shifts the focus of concern: excessive ownership...

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...