We construct and analyze a unique database with 1992-99 information on privatization transactions and labor productivity for the entire surviving population of initially state-owned industrial corporations in Romania. The data permit us to describe the post-privatization ownership structure and...

We construct and analyze a unique database with 1992-99 information on privatization transactions and labor productivity for the entire surviving population of initially state-owned industrial corporations in Romania. The data permits us to describe the post-privatization ownership structure and...

This paper estimates the relative multi-factor productivity (MFP) of privatized and state-owned enterprises using a long panel on all initially state-owned manufacturing firms in Ukraine. The large size and length of the time series in the data permit us to track the privatization process and to...

This paper investigates the cross-sectional and time series variation in the CDS-Bond basis, while untangling their ownership. On average the basis of private companies is 62bps higher than for comparable firms that are publicly traded. This positive difference results from a relatively less...

This paper empirically evaluates two possible sources of large takeover premiums: preemptive bidding and target resistance. We develop an auction model that features costly sequential entry of bidders in takeover contests and that encompasses both explanations. We estimate the model parameters...

Outside directors and audit committees are widely considered to be central elements of good corporate governance. We use a 1999 Korean law as an exogenous shock to assess how board structure affects firm market value. The law mandates 50% outside directors and an audit committee for large public...

The paper argues that the weakest link principle, which has been widely used as a measure of ultimate owners' control rights, has a number of serious problems. A theoretically more satisfactory method of measuring control rights, based on voting power indices, is proposed, and the different...

This paper examines the profitability of investing according to environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria in the U.S. and Europe. Based on data from 2003 to 2017, we show that a portfolio long in stocks with the highest ESG scores and short in those with the lowest scores yields a...

Using a sample of 104 companies that conducted initial public offering (IPO) on the Warsaw Stock Exchange between 2006 and 2016, we investigated the relationship between the accuracy and bias of the earnings forecast disclosed in the IPO prospectus and the firm corporate governance attributes....