We investigate the effect of government share ownership on the cost of corporate debt. Government ownership could carry an implicit debt guarantee reducing the chance of default and leading to a lower cost of debt. On the other hand, government ownership could lead to a higher cost of debt if...

By employing a novel, hand-collected sample of withdrawn and completed share-issue privatizations (SIPs) we show that both groups undergo comparable restructuring processes over the three years preceding the event. We employ matching procedures to explicitly control for the identified...