How Do Individual Politicians Affect Privatization? Evidence from China
In: Review of Finance 26 (3), 637-672
9 Ergebnisse
Sortierung:
In: Review of Finance 26 (3), 637-672
SSRN
Working paper
In: BOFIT Discussion Paper No. 21/2020
SSRN
Working paper
This paper investigates how politicians' patronage connections affect privatizations in China. The connections to top political leaders (i.e., Central Committee of the Communist Party of China) make local politicians engage more in rent-seeking by selling state-owned enterprises (SOEs) at substantial discounts. These connected local politicians are also more protected in anti-corruption investigations, thus extracting more rents by selling SOE assets at substantial discounts. Consequently, the privatizations conducted by the local politicians with patronage connections achieve significantly lower gains in efficiency and performance. To identify the role of patronage connection in privatization, we use the mandatory retirement age cut-offs of Central Committee members in the regression discontinuity design. We find drops in price discounts of privatization deals and jumps in efficiency for privatized SOEs when local politicians lose connections to Central Committee members around the retirement age cut-offs.
BASE
In: Nanyang Business School Research Paper No. 22-21
SSRN
In: Nanyang Business School Research Paper No. 22-33
SSRN
In: Nanyang Business School Research Paper No. 22-39
SSRN
In: Management Science, 67(9), 5606-5615
SSRN
Working paper
In: BOFIT Discussion Paper No. 15/2020
SSRN
Working paper
This paper documents a strong delayed response to COVID-19, which is caused by the SARS-CoV2 virus in countries that did not encounter the SARS disease in 2003. The SARS outbreak was caused by a similar virus, SARS-CoV-1. Individuals in countries that developed SARS infections in 2003 search more intensively for COVID-19-related information on Google during the first outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in late January 2020. Governments in countries that have not experienced SARS respond significantly slower in implementing containment measures to combat COVID-19 than countries that have experienced SARS. Furthermore, the timely responses of individuals and governments are more pronounced in countries that reported deaths caused by SARS, which left deeper imprints. Consequently, COVID-19 case numbers and mortalities have been substantially higher in countries that did not experience SARS deaths. Our findings suggest that the imprint of the early experience of similar viruses is a fundamental mechanism underlying timely responses to COVID-19.
BASE