This paper provides new evidence on the role of distance between banks and borrowers in bank lending. We argue that delegated monitors face higher costs of collecting information about nonlocal borrowers due to the difficulty of obtaining and verifying soft information over distances. Further,...

This paper examines access to external financing in the privatization context and provides new evidence on the effects of financing constraints on performance and investment. Ownership reforms increase firms' reliance on external financing. Empirically, performance and investment changes around...

We investigate the impact of geography on agency costs and firm dividend policies. We argue that remote firm location increases the cost of shareholder oversight of managerial investment decisions. We hypothesize that remotely located firms facing free cash flow problems precommit to higher...

Empirical evidence on the relations between board independence and board decisions and firm performance is generally confounded by serious endogeneity issues. We circumvent these endogeneity problems by demonstrating the strong impact of the local director labor market on board composition....

This book is about industrial policies seen as intrinsic fundamental ingredients of all development processes: witness to that, every experience of successful industrialization, ranging from Germany and the USA, almost two centuries ago, all the way to Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, China and India...

The paper present the conclusions to the book "The Political Economy of Capabilities Accumulation: the Past and Future of Policies for Industrial Development", edited by M. Cimoli, G. Dosi and J. E. Stiglitz, Oxford University Press, forthcoming. While it is futile to search for any 'magic...