We investigate the impact of state ownership on the innovativeness of European listed firms. We find that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) invest more in R&D than private firms, thanks to easier access to bank financing. However, SOEs controlled by politicians with electoral concerns and SOEs with...

Foreign infrastructure investments tend to increase cross-border economic activity between investor and recipient countries. We question whether such an increase comes at the expense of trade with third-party countries (a “zero-sum hypothesis”), or whether the infrastructure investment leads...

This report provides an overview of the causes and consequences of the Italian State-owned Enterprises (SOE) reform process. Particularly, it analyzes the symbiotic link between share issue privatization (SIP), i.e. privatization in public equity markets, and financial market development, and...

In 2005-2006 China reformed its stock market by eliminating non-tradable shares. The regulator set general guidelines and then assigned responsibility for implementation to each company. We derive relations that should have been followed by the prices of stocks and exploit a company-level data...

During 2005-2006, the Chinese government implemented a reform aimed at eliminating the so-called non-tradable shares (NTS), shares typically held by the State or by politically connected institutional investors that were issued at the early stage of financial market development. Our analysis,...

During 2005-2006, the Chinese government implemented a reform aimed at eliminating the so-called non-tradable shares (NTS) typically held by the State or by politically connected institutional investors that were issued at the early stage of financial market development. Our analysis, based on...