We examine 802 investments by 33 Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) in publicly traded companies between May 1985 and November 2009, and find that SWFs tend to invest in large, levered, profitable growth firms, usually headquartered in an OECD country. Announcements of SWF investments yield...

Using panel data of 19 developed economies in the period 1985-2000, we show that share issue privatization (SIP) strongly affects a fundamental aspect of financial development: market liquidity. First, we identify the channels through which a sustained SIP program boosts the liquidity of the...

We construct a comprehensive panel data of 92 publicly traded European utilities over the period 1994-2005 in order to study the relationship between capital structure, regulated prices, and firm value, and examine if and how this interaction is affected by ownership structure and regulatory...

We construct a comprehensive panel data of 96 publicly traded European utilities over the period 1994-2005 in order to study the relationship between the capital structure of regulated firms, regulated prices, and investments, and examine if and how this interaction is affected by ownership...

We study the evolution of the control structure of 141 privatized firms from OECD countries over the period from 1996 through 2000. We find that governments do not relinquish control after “privatization.” We show that the market-to-book ratios of privatized firms converge through time to...

Privatization has certainly been one of the main events of the economic and financial history of the 20th century. Between 1997 and 2004 more than 4,000 privatization operations were carried out in the world, bringing to governments revenues for over 1,350US$billion. Western Europe emerges as...

This paper reviews the state of thinking on the governance role of public ownership and control. We argue that the transfer of operational control over productive assets to the private sector represents the most desirable governance, due to the inherent difficulty for citizens to constrain...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the role of political institutions in privatization. The empirical testing relies on a new political database with continuous and time-varying measures of the political-institutional setting, and of the partisan orientation of the executive. Using...

This paper studies the timing of privatization in 21 major developed economies in the 1977-2002 period. Duration analysis shows that political fragmentation plays a significant role in explaining government's decision to privatize: privatization is delayed longer in democracies characterized by...

We study the effect of state ownership on the market-to-book ratios of publicly traded European utilities observed from 1994 to 2005. We find that when the company is subject to independent regulation, state ownership is positively associated with firm value. This effect is strong and...