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...

The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) has considered climate change as a risk issue since 2010. Several emission disclosure initiatives exist aimed at informing investors about the financial risks associated with a zero or low carbon transition. Stricter regulations, particularly in a few...

This paper documents recent structural changes in China's corporate landscape, based on company level data, providing a complementary perspective to that of official Chinese statistics. We classify China's largest companies by revenue since 2004 (based on Fortune Global 500 rankings), and...

We study whether CEO political ideology affected how S&P 500 firms reacted to the Covid-19 pandemic, an exogenous shock to demand and supply. We hypothesize that conservative CEOs are more likely to adopt shareholder-friendly than employee-friendly reactions to the pandemic. Hence, they should...

This paper uses the standard one-sector neoclassical growth model to investigate why China’s consumption has been low and investment high. It finds that the low cost of capital has been quantitatively an important factor. Theory predicts that the price of capital may have been significantly...

A multilateral currency union removes the intraregional exchange rates but not the union rate variability with the rest of the world. The intraregional exchange rate variability is thus latent. A two-step procedure is developed to measure the variability. The measured variables are used to model...

Productivity growth in Indian manufacturing is an important driver of overall growth, yet the issues related to its measurement have still not been resolved. The issue of how to compute an aggregate productivity measure holds significance for two reasons: one, the productivity of a firm should...

This study examines the long-run relationship between industrial pollution and income in China using provincial panel data. Four types of pollutants are modelled: waste water, solid wastes, soot and SO2 emission. Two types of income effects are considered: the scale and growth effects. The study...

The aim of the paper is to present evidence that China and India are, and will remain, two very different actors in international negotiations to control global warming. We base our conclusions on historical data and on scenarios until 2050. The Business-as-Usual scenario (BaU) is compared to...

China had been singled out by Western politicians and media for dragging its feet on international climate negotiations at Copenhagen, the accusations previously always targeted on the U.S. To put such a criticism into perspective, this paper provides some reflections on China's stance and...