There is a growing literature comparing the performance of private vs. state-owned companies. Yet, there is little work examining the effects of having the government as a minority shareholder of private companies. We conduct such a study using data for 296 publicly-traded corporations in...

There is growing interest in how governments shape industries and influence firm performance. Using a database of 296 firms traded on the São Paulo stock exchange between 1995 and 2003, we find having BNDES (the Brazilian National Development Bank) as a minority owner to increase firms' return...

We study if CEOs and their backgrounds matter for the performance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) exploiting the fact that these companies had different CEOs (with different backgrounds) in different moments in time. We construct a database of Brazilian SOEs between 1973 and 1993 and make...

Focusing on impact-oriented strategies, we study a resource-based paradox rooted in a trade-off between effectiveness and inclusiveness. Using a unique dataset of 6,000 microcredit loan applications received by an impact-oriented microfinance firm, we study the role of three resource types:...

Despite the emergence of contracts between governments and private actors involved in public services, a critical issue is how to enforce payments based on outcomes such as student learning or prisoner recidivism. Imperfect measurement may fail to reflect changes in outcomes that were caused by...

The unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic has sparked a new debate on the merits of markets vs. states for addressing acute societal crises. While some argue that market forces are imperative to stimulate increased supply of critical products and services, others contend that dealing with the pandemic...

The spread of investments by sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) around the world has raised questions about what determines their location choices. We argue that SWFs, like multinational companies, consider a host of cross-country distance factors to guide their location decisions and that the effect...

Opportunistic behavior in contractual relations that require specific investments, commonly referred to as 'hold-up', has been employed in the literature as an argument to explain the existence of vertically integrated firms. However, many authors posit that this behavior can be avoided through...