We explore how property rights protections across different regions in China affect the flow of proprietary information and managers' incentives to disclose details of financial and operating performance. Our focus on research and development spillovers as a proxy for information leakages to...

Building on the theory of Burkart et al. (2003) that family ownership and control of firms mitigate the twin conflicts between owners and managers and between majority and minority owners, we suggest that the allocation of firm ownership rights and informal governance within controlling families...

We study how uncompensated research and development (R&D) spillovers - the leakage of proprietary information through imitation or theft - affect firms’ investment decisions. Using variation in property rights protections across different regions within China we find that 1) uncompensated...

Using a sample of 1,103 Chinese private-sector firms that went public during 2004-2016, we find that founders from the country’s regions with stronger collectivist cultures engage more family members as managers, retain more firm ownership within the family, and share the controlling ownership...