This paper documents that the spread of communism in China was partly caused by state failures in the early 20th century. It finds that famines became more frequent after China fell into warlord fragmentation, especially for prefectures with less rugged borders and those facing stronger military...

We extend the current empirical literature on privatization by exploring the effect of ultimate privatization on the performance of Chinese listed companies. Ultimate privatization is defined as the incidence of transferring the ultimate control of a state-owned company from the government to...

How do firms finance large cash flow requirements?  We examine this in the context of firms that are subject to substantial cash flow requirements.  We find that trade credit, inventory and cash stock reductions are all important in the short term for mild requirements.  Larger and longer...

This paper analyzes government incentives in privatization and shows that governments' cheap talk results in non-credible policy. Ex-post, only bad firms will take a sequential strategy in privatization, which will reveal its type and lead to a price drop. These results are used to analyse...

Unlike in other countries, negotiated block shares have huge discounts in China. We argue that trading restrictions help to explain this puzzle. Block shares in China face trading restrictions in the open market and can only be traded in the form of block transfers at negotiated prices. Using a...

How do firms finance large cash flow requirements? We examine this in the context of firms that are subject to substantial cash flow requirements. We find that trade credit, inventory and cash stock reductions are all important in the short term for mild requirements. Larger and longer cash flow...