We investigate the impact of state ownership on the innovativeness of European listed firms. We find that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) invest more in R&D than private firms, thanks to easier access to bank financing. However, SOEs controlled by politicians with electoral concerns and SOEs with...

Commodity (primarily oil) funds are facing today the most severe adverse shock of their history. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the crisis in oil-rich nations, already hit by low oil prices and declining hydrocarbon revenues. Governments of all stripes are tapping sovereign wealth and...

Extant research finds that announcement-period abnormal returns of sovereign wealth fund (SWF) equity investments in publicly traded firms are positive but lower than those of comparable private investments. We investigate the determinants of this “SWF discount” and mitigating mechanisms. We...

Foreign infrastructure investments tend to increase cross-border economic activity between investor and recipient countries. We question whether such an increase comes at the expense of trade with third-party countries (a “zero-sum hypothesis”), or whether the infrastructure investment leads...

Co-lending by private-sector and government-owned lenders accounts for nearly one-tenth of all syndicated-loan funding to corporate borrowers over the three decades spanning 1980 to 2010. I find evidence that private-sector institutions co-lend with government-owned lenders to benefit from...