There is growing interest in how governments shape industries and influence firm performance. Using a database of 296 firms traded on the São Paulo stock exchange between 1995 and 2003, we find having BNDES (the Brazilian National Development Bank) as a minority owner to increase firms' return...

While past decades were characterized by economic liberalization and deregulation, there re-mains an enduring presence of political influence over the private economy. Such influence can either benefit (e.g. government support addressed at survival and growth prospects) or harm (e.g. reduced...

Previous studies have primarily focused on the relative success of collectively owned enterprises (COEs) in China during the early years of reform, but they have ignored the agency problems inherent in this type of organizational form that may be an obstacle to further improving performance in a...

Many companies spend substantial resources in order to be viewed as socially responsible. We argue that one reason firms do this is to create a warm glow about the firm and thereby affect employee behavior and improve performance. This proposition is tested with an incomplete contract...

We study the problem of an investor that buys an equity stake in an entrepreneurial venture, under the assumption that the former cannot monitor the latter's operations. The dynamics implied by the optimal incentive scheme is rich and quite different from that induced by other models of repeated...

We study the problem of an investor that buys an equity stake in an entrepreneurial venture, under the assumption that the former cannot monitor the latter’s operations. The dynamics implied by the optimal incentive scheme is rich and quite different from that induced by other models of...

We study the problem of an investor that buys an equity stake in an entrepreneurial venture, under the assumption that the former cannot monitor the latter’s operations. The dynamics implied by the optimal incentive scheme is rich and quite different from that induced by other models of...

The prevalence of pay based on risky firm outcomes for non-executive workers presents a puzzling departure from conventional contract theory, which predicts insurance provision by the firm. I revisit this puzzle in a framework with workers who prefer early resolution of uncertainty. When workers...

We take advantage of comprehensive panel data available as a result of the 2006 SEC disclosure rules on relative performance evaluation (RPE) to (i) better understand how firms choose performance peer groups used in CEO RPE contracts and (ii) to investigate the causal impact of mandatory...

Economic sociologists have concluded that social embeddedness, characterized by trust and reciprocity, is widespread in organization-to-organization exchange. There remains, however, a tension between theorists who pose trust as an alternative logic to asocial price negotiations or contractual...