In a 2010 special report, The Economist called the resurgence of state-owned mega-enterprises, especially those in emerging economies, “Leviathan Inc,” and criticized their poor governance and low efficiency. We show that state-owned enterprises engage more in environmental issues and are more responsive to salient environmental events.
The effect is more pronounced in energy firms located in emerging economies and countries with higher energy risks, and with direct ownership held by domestic government rather than sovereign wealth funds. Market value does not suffer from such engagement. These results suggest that “Leviathan Inc.” may be better positioned at dealing with environmental externalities.
Overlapping Ownership, R&D Spillovers, and Antitrust Policy
This paper considers cost-reducing R&D investment with spillovers in a Cournot oligopoly with overlapping ownership. We show that overlapping ownership leads to internalization of rivals’ profits by firms and find that, for demand not too...Read more
The Ownership of Japanese Corporations in the 20th Century
Twentieth century Japan provides a remarkable laboratory for examining how an externally imposed institutional and regulatory intervention affects the ownership of corporations. In the first half of the century, Japan had weak legal protection...Read more
This panel discussion focused on corporate governance indices.
We show theoretically and empirically that executives are paid less for their own firm’s performance and more for their rivals’ performance if an i
In this paper we show that dual-class shares can be an answer to agency conflicts rather than a result of agency conflicts.
