Using the high-power setting of newly privatized firms from 64 countries, we examine the relationship between ownership type and firm-level capital allocations as captured by investment sensitivity to stock price. Consistent with our predictions that government and foreign institutional owners are associated with different levels of information asymmetry and agency problems, we find strong and ...

China is one of the most popular investment destinations in the world. This paper argues that FDI inflows into China are in fact driven by some fundamental inefficiencies in the Chinese economy. Specifically, one of the inefficiencies has to do with a high level of fragmentation of both goods and asset markets. This fragmentation increases demand for FDI both because market fragmentation makes ...

This paper examines the bilateral, source and host factors driving portfolio equity investment across a set of countries using International Monetary Fund’s new dataset on international equity holdings at the end of 1997, 2001 and 2002. The paper finds that the bilateral equity investment is strongly correlated with the underlying patterns of trade in goods and services. The information asymmet...

Using data on security holdings of 10,771 institutional investors from 72 different countries, we test whether concentrated investment strategies result in superior abnormal returns to institutional investors. We examine three measures of portfolio concentration: home country, foreign country, and industry concentration and show that portfolio concentration leads to higher abnormal returns of i...

Business groups, the leading economic players in emerging economies, have responded to the market‐oriented transition primarily through corporate restructuring. Agency theory predicts that acquisition and divestiture would serve the interests of dominant families and foreign investors in different ways. Further, dominant families, foreign investors from shareholder‐based countries, and foreign ...

Foreign direct investment in developing countries has recently received a renewed attention as a major determinant of financial development. Indeed, where markets are financially constrained, foreign investment offers a viable financing opportunity assorted with a transfer of technological and managerial know-how. In this paper, we examine the determinants of foreign investors’ participation in...

Transition of the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to functioning market economies creates new investment opportunities. A decade ago capital markets were almost absent in all CEE countries but they are developing rapidly. At the end of the 1990s institutional investors from Western countries are present in the equity and bond markets of the largest CEE economies. ...