We use a survey of 452 Russian shops, most of which were privatized between 1992 and 1993, to measure the importance of alternative channels through which privatization promotes restructuring. Restructuring is measured as major renovation, a change in suppliers, an increase in hours stores stay...

A number of recent studies have testified to the benefits of private as opposed to state ownership of firms. One research strand compares private and state firms in the same line of activity, such as air transport or railroads, and finds the former to be more efficient (see Boardman and Vining,...

A number of studies have identifed patterns of positive correlation of returns, or comovement, among different traded securities. We distinguish three views of such comovement. The traditional quot;fundamentalsquot; view explains the comovement of securities through positive correlations in the...

We study asset prices in an economy where some investors classify risky assets into different styles and move funds back and forth between these styles depending on their relative performance. Our assumptions imply that news about one style can affect the prices of other apparently unrelated...

Recent empirical research inn finance has uncovered two families of pervasive regularities: underreaction of stock prices to news such as earnings announcements; and overreaction of stock prices to a series of good or bad news. In this paper, we present a parsimonious model of investor sentiment...

Recent empirical research in finance has uncovered two families of pervasive regularities: underreaction of stock prices to news such as earnings announcements; and overreaction of stock prices to a series of good or bad news. In this paper, we present a parsimonious model of investor sentiment...

A number of studies have identified patterns of positive correlation of returns, or comovement, among different traded securities. We distinguish three views of such co- movement. The traditional quot;fundamentalsquot; view explains the comovement of securities through positive correlations in...

We consider two broad views of return comovement: the traditional view, derived from frictionless economies with rational investors, which attributes it to comovement in news about fundamental value, and an alternative view, in which market frictions or noise-trader sentiment delink it from...

A number of studies have identified patterns of positive correlation of returns, orcomovement, among different traded securities. We distinguish three views of such comovement. The traditional \fundamentalsquot; view explains the comovement of securities through positive correlations in the...

We present a new measure of legal protection of minority shareholders against expropriation by corporate insiders: the anti-self-dealing index. Assembled with the help of Lex Mundi law firms, the index is calculated for 72 countries based on legal rules prevailing in 2003, and focuses on private...