Voucher privatization programmes have been criticized for leading to excessively dispersed ownership and hence failure of control and insufficient corporate governance. We analyse the results of the five auction rounds of the Czech privatization programme and subsequent stock market...

This Paper investigates valuation effects of share block transfers and employs agency theory to explain the determinants of block premia. A sample of transactions from Poland is used to measure benefits and costs of ownership concentration. Block premia are found to be substantially lower than...

We propose a model in which better governance incentivizes managers to perform better and thus saves on the cost of providing pay for performance. However, when managerial talent is scarce, firms' competition to attract better managers reduces an individual firm's incentives to invest in...

We reexamine the issue of executive compensation within a general equilibrium production context. Intertemporal optimality places strong restrictions on the form of a representative manager's compensation contract, restrictions that appear to be incompatible with the fact that the bulk of many...

We study the relationship between liquid asset holding and the pattern of share ownership and control structures within the firm. We explore these issues using a data set of Belgian firms that is particularly well suited to studying the institutions of control oriented finance. The data include...

We test under what circumstances boards discipline managers and whether such interventions improve performance. We exploit exogenous variation due to the staggered adoption of corporate governance laws in formerly Communist countries coupled with detailed ‘hard’ information about the...

We develop a model of internal governance where the self-serving actions of top management are limited by the potential reaction of subordinates. We find that internal governance can mitigate agency problems and ensure firms have substantial value, even without any external governance. Internal...

The purpose of this Paper is to study the determinants of the concentration of ownership in a privatized, regulated firm. The discussion illustrates some aspects of the costs and benefits of different corporate systems. Privatized utilities are large firms with professional management: there is...

This Paper develops an account of the role and significance of rent extraction in executive compensation. Under the optimal contracting view of executive compensation, which has dominated academic research on the subject, pay arrangements are set by a board of directors that aims to maximize...

We follow the evolution of ownership structure in a sample of 80 Israeli companies that unified their dual-class shares in the 1990s, and compare it with a control sample of firms that maintained their dual share structure at least until 2000. Our main findings are as follows. First, controlling...