This paper studies international joint ventures, where foreign direct investment is performed by a foreign and a domestic firm that together set up a new firm, the joint venture. Employing administrative data on all international joint ventures in China from 1998 to 2007—roughly a quarter of...

This paper presents a new theory on conglomeration. We show that conglomeration can serve as an effective mechanism in risk hedging. A conglomerate can be set up so that risks among some of its subsidiaries are negatively correlated. By such a design, the overall risk of the conglomerate is kept...

This paper provides a theory on staged or step-by-step privatization. We show that such an approach can be efficient, in the sense that it can successfully transform a state-owned enterprise into an efficient market-based firm by the time when the reform is complete. It may explain the...

Based on a large data set containing over 300,000 Chinese firms and detailed micro-level information, this paper conducts an empirical analysis of firms in distress. We focus on economic distress rather than financial distress; we study unlisted firms in an emerging market rather than listed...

We study the economics of international joint ventures with administrative data for China exploiting the change in foreign direct investment policy as China entered the WTO in the year 2002. Accounting for a quarter of all international joint ventures worldwide, we first show that foreign...