A large legal and economic literature describes how state-owned enterprises (SOEs) suffer from a variety of agency and political problems. Less theory and evidence, however, have been generated about the reasons why state-owned enterprises listed in stock markets manage to attract investors to...

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are often justified for correcting market failures, providing essential public services, and fulfilling social objectives. Yet, SOEs face unique governance challenges as agency conflicts usually increase with state ownership. This paper examines Brazil's efforts to...

In this paper we document the extent and reach of state capitalism around the world and explore its economic implications. We focus on governmental provision of capital to corporations – either equity or debt – as a defining feature of state capitalism. We present a stylized distinction...

We study if CEOs and their backgrounds matter for the performance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) exploiting the fact that these companies had different CEOs (with different backgrounds) in different moments in time. We construct a database of Brazilian SOEs between 1973 and 1993 and make...

The unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic has sparked a new debate on the merits of markets vs. states for addressing acute societal crises. While some argue that market forces are imperative to stimulate increased supply of critical products and services, others contend that dealing with the pandemic...