Strong governance frameworks for public enterprises have long been an anchor of stability and efficiency underpinning their financial operations and performance. Cross-country experiences with the adoption of robust legal, regulatory and institutional arrangements-in line with international best...

Based on a survey that we designed and that covers a stratified random sample of 12,400 firms in 120 cities in China with firm-level accounting information for 2002-2004, this paper examines the presence of systematic distortions in capital allocation that result in uneven marginal returns to...

China’s high corporate savings rate is commonly claimed to be a key driver for the country’s large current account surplus. The mainstream explanation for high corporate savings is a combination of windfall profits in state-owned firms, especially in resource sectors, and mis-governance of...

Government-linked companies (GLCs) have a significant presence in Singapore''s corporate sector. Unlike parastatals in many other countries, these companies are run on a competitive, commercial basis, ostensibly without government privileges. Based on data from publicly listed GLCs and non-GLCs,...

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are present in key sectors of the economies around the world. While they can provide an important public service, there is widespread concern that their activities are negatively affected by corruption. However, there is limited cross-country analysis on the costs...

The reform of the Italian public administration has been a priority for at least two decades, with several major initiatives undertaken toward modernization and simplification. Notwithstanding laudable intentions, however, progress remains limited. This analysis is a case study of two reforms...

This paper studies the relationship between banks' holdings of domestic sovereign securities and credit growth to the private sector in emerging market and developing economies. Higher banks' holdings of government debt are associated with a lower credit growth to the private sector and with a...

We model an economy in which domestic banks and firms face incentive constraints, as in Holmstrom and Tirole (1997). Firms borrow from banks and uninformed investors, and can collude with banks to reduce the intensity of monitoring. We study the general equilibrium effects of capital flows...