Most pre-crisis explanations of the various corporate governance systems have considered the separation between ownership and control to be an advantage of the Anglo-American economies. They have also attributed the failure of other countries to achieve these efficient arrangements to their...

The paper analyzes the interplay of product market competition and governance on CEO compensation in Italian listed firms from 2000 to 2011 and tests the impact of the 2007-08 financial crisis on pay-performance sensitivity. We argue that important differences both in the level of compensation...

We show how temporary ownership by private equity firms affects industry structure, competition and welfare. Temporary ownership leads to strong investment incentives because equilibrium resale prices are determined by buyers incentives to block rivals from obtaining assets. These incentives...

Bank intermediated finance has been cited frequently as the preferred means for channeling funds from savers to firms. Germany is the prototypical economy where universal banks allegedly exert substantial influence over firms. Despite frequent assertions about the considerable power of German...

Ownership takeovers often follow complex strategies where the control of the target firm is acquired through a sequence of independent contracts. Based on this observation, we develop a novel theoretical model wherein the acquiring firm decides on the number of steps towards the full ownership...

We analyze the long-term effects of firm break-up and ownership change on corporate performance. Our analysis is based on a unique data set for a large number of Czech firms spanning the period 1996-2005. We employ a propensity score matching procedure to deal with endogeneity problems. Our...

This paper studies the impact of corporate acquisitions - both domestic and cross-border - on the uncertainty faced by acquiring firms. We use data for UK publicly-listed firms from 2004 to 2017 and employ a matching estimator combined with difference-in-differences to control for the endogenous...

The paper argues that the weakest link principle, which has been widely used as a measure of ultimate owners' control rights, has a number of serious problems. A theoretically more satisfactory method of measuring control rights, based on voting power indices, is proposed, and the different...

This paper studies the evolution of hurricane insurance in Florida over the last decades. Hurricanes (and other natural catastrophes) are typically referred to as uninsurableʺ risks. The more exposed property owners find it difficult to obtain insurance cover from the private market and/or can...

This paper investigates to what extent unregulated local monopolies attempt not to evoke the introduction of a formal price regulation by conforming to customers' and authorities' expectations. It is argued that utilities can meet expectations by setting prices that imitate neighbours' prices....