In many countries, banks lend to firms controlled by the bank's owners. We examine the benefits of related lending using a newly assembled dataset for Mexico. Related lending is prevalent (20% of commercial loans) and takes place on better terms than arm's-length lending (annual interest rates...

Critics of privatization often argue that its benefits come at a high cost to society. The authors test the validity of this criticism for Mexico's privatization program, one of the world's largest case-by-case programs. Assessing the performance of newly privatized firms in such areas as...

Previous research has shown that stocks with low prices relative to book value, cash flow, earnings, or dividends (that is, value stocks) earn high returns. Value stocks may earn high returns because they are more risky. Alternatively, systematic errors in expectations may explain the high...

Criticisms of privatization have centered around the possibility that the observed higher profitability of privatized companies comes at the expense of the rest of society. In this paper we focus on two of the most likely channels for social losses: (1) increased prices as firms capitalize on...

The paper characterizes several empirical regularities of closed- end fund prices and examines the extent to which a 'sentiment' model of asset prices is consistent with the empirical regularities. We find that after controlling for the effect of cross-border investment restrictions, country...