In this paper we analyze an entrepreneur /manager's choice between private and public ownership in a setting in which management needs some elbow room or autonomy to optimally manage the firm. In public capital markets, the corporate governance regime in place exposes the firm to exogenous...

This paper analyzes the impact of blockownership dispersion on firm value. Blockholdings by multiple blockholders is a widespread phenomenon in the U.S. market. It is not clear, however, whether dispersion among blockholder is preferable to having a more concentrated ownership structure. To test...

Numerous gift exchange experiments have found a positive relationship between employers' wage offers and workers' effort levels. In (almost) all these experiments the employer both owns and controls the firm. Yet in reality many firms are characterized by the separation of ownership and control....

We analyze a publicly-traded firm's decision to stay public or go private when managerial autonomy from shareholder intervention affects the supply of productive inputs by management. We show that both the advantage and the disadvantage of public ownership relative to private ownership lie in...

We study the role of private equity firms in cross-border mergers and acquisitions. We find that private equity-owned firms are more likely to become targets in crossborderM&A transactions. This effect is particularly strong in transactions where the target or its shareholders actively reach out...

In this paper, we develop a model that can explain why governments may want to choose to offer a voluntary disclosure program that allows people who withheld taxes to turn themselves in without punishment. We find that such a leniency rule not only increases government revenue when it comes as a...

The main goal of this study is two-fold: (1) to provide a general overview of thecontributions to the literature on the informal sector, with a special focus on the PublicChoice approach; and (2) to compare these contributions across two institutionallydifferent types of countries: developed and...

A series of experiments in Albania and the Netherlands give us the opportunity to compare behavioral patterns related to tax evasion. Subjects have to decide between a random 'registered' income, the realization of which will be known to the experimenter for sure, and a random 'unregistered'...

We study the phenomenon of tax evasion using a simple signaling model, in which the signal is taxpayer's reported income. The novelty of our approach lies in the way we define honesty. Specifically, we advocate the view that there are no absolutely honest taxpayers: all taxpayers may under...

In this paper, we test empirically whether there is a relationship between corporate income taxes and CEO bonus payments. Using Compustat and ExecuComp data from 1992 to 2010, we find mixed results. Looking at the whole sample, the average bonus contract rewards tax savings excessively in...