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...

This paper presents a simple model for dual-class stock shares, in which common shareholders receive both public and private cash flows (i.e. dividends and any private benefit of holding voting rights) and preferred shareholders only receive public cash flows (i.e. dividends). The dual-class...

Using a data set for 162 largest Hungarian firms during the period of 1994-1999 this paper explores the determinants of equity shares held by both foreign investors and by Hungarian corporations. We find evidence of a post-privatisation evolution towards more homogeneous equity structures, where...

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are often justified for correcting market failures, providing essential public services, and fulfilling social objectives. Yet, SOEs face unique governance challenges as agency conflicts usually increase with state ownership. This paper examines Brazil's efforts to...

We follow the evolution of ownership structure in a sample of 80 Israeli companies that unified their dual-class shares in the 1990s, and compare it with a control sample of firms that maintained their dual share structure at least until 2000. Our main findings are as follows. First, controlling...

We investigate the role of ownership structure and investor protection in postprivatization corporate governance. We find that the government relinquishes control over time, mainly to the benefit of local institutions and foreign investors. We also show that private ownership tends to...

This paper investigates how the ownership and the procedure for the selection of firms operating in the local public transport sector affect their productivity. In order to compare different institutional regimes, we carry out a comparative analysis of 72 companies operating in large European...

In this paper we study firm dynamics and industry equilibrium when firms under financial distress face a non-trivial choice between alternative bankruptcy procedures. Given limited commitment and asymmetric information, financial contracts specify default, renegotiation and reorganization...

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...