We compare two pricing strategies -- buffet pricing and usage pricing -- of excludable public goods for social welfare maximization. Buffet pricing is better than usage pricing for low consumer heterogeneity, while the opposite holds for high consumer heterogeneity.

Poor protection of private property has limited the access to bank loans by private enterprises in developing and transition economies. Under those circumstances, private entrepreneurs have resorted to various ways of enhancing the "de facto" protection of private property. Using a dataset of...

Recent research suggests that expropriation by controlling shareholders of other shareholders is an important problem in both publicly held and closely held firms. This paper examines how partners in closely held firms can make control-right arrangements to mitigate expropriation and other...

Bai, Chong-En, Lu, Jiangyong, and Tao, Zhigang--How does privatization work in China? Using a comprehensive panel data set of China's state-owned enterprises, we investigate the impacts of privatization on social welfare and firm performance indicators. The privatization of China's state-owned...

This paper analyzes a model with many homogeneous agents, whose effort can be allocated to two tasks. One task produces a public good that is an important input for the production of the final output. The other task only affects the agent's own output. We show that, when the public input and the...

This paper is concerned with the coexistence of company-owned units and franchised units in business format franchising and their different contractual arrangements. Drawing insights from case studies that indicate both the development and the maintenance of company-wide brand names and...

This paper presents a model of the joint venture that is grounded in the stylized facts we found from a sample of 200 joint venture contracts. The model incorporates the revenue-sharing contract into the incomplete contract frameworks of Grossman-Hart-Moore Property Rights Theory and the...

This paper uses a dynamic panel estimation method to investigate the determinants of regional specialization in China’s industries, paying particular attention to local protectionism. Less geographic concentration is found in industries where the past tax-plus-profit margins and the shares of...

During transition, maintaining employment and providing a social safety net for the unemployed are important to social stability, which in turn is crucial for the productivity of the whole economy. Because independent institutions for social safety are lacking and firms with strong profit...