The authors argue that mass privatization in the Czech Republic has spurred enterprise restructuring and that investment funds have played a key part in this outcome. Using 1992-95 data for more than 700 Czech firms, the authors find strong positive relationships between ownership concentration...

The Czech Republic's mass-privatization scheme improved the management of privatized firms by concentrating ownership. And contrary to expectations, banks with an (indirect) equity stake in a privatized firm have a positive influence on the firm's corporate governance. The Czech Republic's...

A central puzzle in international finance is that real exchange rates are volatile and, in stark contradiction to effcient risk-sharing, negatively correlated with cross-country consumption ratios. This paper shows that incomplete asset markets and a low price elasticity of tradables can account...