Suchergebnisse

This article presents a discussion of the effects of bargaining costs on the behavior of rational bargainers. Rationality is defined so as to reflect the bargainers' recognition of cooperative as well as conflictual aspects of bargaining. Bargaining is viewed as a sequential non-zero-sum game, which allows the bargainers to communicate through exchanges of their demands. It is shown that if the communication process were entirely costless, no need for communication would arise. The presence of bargaining costs makes each bargainer's behavior vulnerable to his opponent's actions, and thus opens the way for bargaining. As a result, a rational bargainer may make demands deviating from his expectations of the final terms of agreement. Rational behavior becomes, in a sense, unpredictable and may not suffice to reach an agreement. Some implications of the analysis are discussed.

The existing literature on soft budget constraints suggests that firms may be subsidized for political reasons or because of the creditors' desire to recover a part of the sunk cost invested in an earlier period. In all these models hard budget constraints are viewed as being, in principle, capable of inducing the necessary restructuring behaviour on the level of the firm. This paper argues that the imposition of financial discipline is not sufficient to remedy ownership and governance‐related deficiencies of corporate performance. Using evidence from the post‐communist transition economies, the paper shows that a policy of hard budget constraints cannot induce successful revenue restructuring, which requires entrepreneurial incentives inherent in certain ownership types (most notably, outside investors). The paper also shows that the policy of hard budget constraints falters when state firms, because of inferior revenue performance and less willingness to meet payment obligations, continue to pose a higher credit risk than privatized firms. The brunt of state firms' lower creditworthiness falls on state creditors. But the 'softness' of these creditors, while harmful in many ways, is not necessarily irrational, if it prevents the demise of firms that are in principle capable of successful restructuring through ownership changes.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- Part I: Framework -- CHAPTER ONE. What Is Good Corporate Governance? -- PART II. The Elements of Good Corporate Governance: Law -- CHAPTER TWO. Patterns of Legal Change: Shareholder and Creditor Rights in Transition Economies -- CHAPTER THREE. The Common Law and Economic Growth: Hayek Might Be Right -- PART III. The Elements of Good Corporate Governance: Owners and Managers -- CHAPTER FOUR. Russian Privatization and Corporate Governance: What Went Wrong? -- CHAPTER FIVE. Why Ownership Matters: Entrepreneurship and the Restructuring of Enterprises in Central Europe -- PART IV. The Elements of Good Corporate Governance: Stock Markets -- CHAPTER SIX/ Corporate Governance in Transitional Economies: Lessons from the Prewar Japanese Cotton Textile Industry -- CHAPTER SEVEN. Privatization and Corporate Governance: The Lessons from Securities Market Failure -- CHAPTER EIGHT. The Information Content of Stock Markets: Why Do Emerging Markets Have Synchronous Stock Price Movements? -- PART V. What Does Transition Contribute to Theory? -- CHAPTER NINE. Conclusion: The Unexplored Role of Initial Conditions -- List of Contributors -- Index