We argue that in an unreliable enforcement regime, transactions tend to become intermediated through institutions or concentrated among agents bound by some form of private enforcement. Provision of funding shifts from risk capital to debt, and from markets to institutions with long term...

Novel early stage ideas face uncertainty on the expertise needed to elaborate them, which creates a need to circulate them widely to find a match. Yet as information is not excludable, shared ideas may be stolen, reducing incentives to innovate. Still, in idea-rich environments inventors may...

Established firms often fail to maintain leadership following disruptive market shifts. We argue that such firms are more prone to internal resistance. A radical adjustment of assets affects the distribution of employee rents, creating winners and losers. Losers resist large changes when strong...

This paper reviews the state of thinking on the governance role of public ownership and control. We argue that the transfer of operational control over productive assets to the private sector represents the most desirable governance, due to the inherent difficulty for citizens to constrain...

This paper studies product market competition under a strategic transparency decision. Dominant investors can influence information collection in the financial market, and thereby corporate transparency, by affecting market liquidity or the cost of information collection. More transparency on a...

This paper investigates whether privatisation in emerging economies has a significant indirect effect on local stock market development through the resolution of political risk. We argue that a sustained privatisation programme represents a major political test which gradually resolves...

Investor confidence is a necessary condition for the development of emerging markets. Investors recognize that since market-oriented reform policies may be reversed or hindered, they face the risk of ex post policy changes with redistributive impact on investment returns. We argue that a...

This paper investigates the determinants of underpricing at initial public offerings in theHungarian Initial Public Offerings (IPO) market in 1990–1998, a period of transition from socialist to market economy and immaturity of the domestic capital market. The evidence suggests that political...