Research has found that political connectedness can have both positive and negative effects on firm value. To resolve these mixed findings, we investigate the impact of political ties conditional on ownership for a sample of Chinese firms over the period 1999 to 2006. We find that private firms with politically connected managers have a higher value and obtain more government subsidies than tho...

We examine how changes in hospital ownership to and from for-profit status affect quality and Medicare payments per hospital stay. We hypothesize that hospitals converting to for-profit ownership boost post acquisition profitability by reducing dimensions of quality not readily observed by patients and by raising prices. We find that 1-2 years after conversion to for-profit status, mortality of...

OBJECTIVE To test whether nonprofit, for-profit, or government hospital ownership affects medical service provision in rural hospital markets, either directly or through the spillover effects of ownership mix. DATA SOURCES/STUDY SETTING Data are from the American Hospital Association, U.S. Census, CMS Healthcare Cost Report Information System and Prospective Payment System Minimum Data File, ...

This paper analyzes the effects of hospital ownership on three specific strategies to improve financial performance. These strategies include (1) spending on advertising to increase revenues through increased market share and premium prices; (2) spending on accounting systems to cut costs, increase accounts receivable collections, or increase legitimacy with stakeholders and donors; and (3) imp...

The economic literature on PPPs has generally overlooked agency problems within private consortia. We provide a first contribution in this direction, relying on a simple incomplete contracts framework where a Builder and an Operator set up a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to carry out a contract with the government. Because of incomplete contracts, the bundling of tasks is imperfect, and the SPV...

People who feed cats that they do not perceive they own (sometimes called semi-owners) are thought to make a considerable contribution to unwanted cat numbers because the cats they support are generally not sterilized. Understanding people's perception of cat ownership and the psychology underlying cat semi-ownership could inform approaches to mitigate the negative effects of cat semi-ownership...

In recent years, vehicle theft has become an increasing problem worldwide. A staggering number of cars are stolen every year, and up to half of these are never recovered. Thus, vehicle ownership identification is an important security issue. In this paper, based on the triple-trapdoor chameleon hash function and the concept of the hash-sign-switch paradigm, we propose the vehicle ownership iden...

The recent strategy of the Government of China has been to attract foreign direct investment in order to obtain foreign technology and capital. There is an official preference for advanced technology, and for its rapid diffusion to domestic firms. This approach underpins the joint-venture legislation applicable to most parts of the manufacturing sector. Using four case studies of foreign affili...