In equipment-intensive sectors — such as water utilities, power generation, gas — billions of dollars are spent in capital equipment. We discuss and characterize the optimal policy of a profit-maximizing firm and compare it with the optimal policy of a welfare-maximizing planner. When there...

We look at the corporate performance of family firms listed on the French stock exchange between 1994 and 2000. On the French stock market, approximately one third of the firms are widely held, another third are founder controlled and the remaining third are heir-controlled family firms. We find...

A financial system can only perform its function of channelling funds from savers to investors if it offers sufficient assurance to the providers of the funds that they will reap the rewards which have been promised to them. To the extent that this assurance is not provided by contracts alone,...

This paper studies the empirical relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate financial performance in Korea using a sample of 1122 firm-years during 2002-2008. We measure corporate social responsibility by both an equal-weighted CSR index and a stakeholder-weighted CSR...

Legal origin - civil vs. common law - is said in much modern economic work to determine the strength of financial markets and the structure of corporate ownership, even in the world''s richer nations. The main means are thought to lie in how investor protection and property protection connect to...