Using both bankand country-level data on banking sectors from 70 countries over the period 1992–2006, this paper empirically investigates the joint homeand host-country effects of banking market structure, macroeconomic condition, governance, and changes in bank supervision on foreign bank margins. We find that foreign banks are more profitable than domestic banks when they operate in a host co...

Despite the extraordinarily high ownership concentration widely observed in emerging market firms as a result of institutional voids, there is little research on how this high ownership concentration affects the exporting behavior of emerging market firms. From principal–agent and institutional perspectives, we hypothesize that high ownership concentration has a negative relationship with expor...

We present a model in which wage-setting structures explain cross-country variation in corporate governance. The model predicts a nonmonotonic relationship between the level of centralization in wage-bargaining institutions and the levels of firm ownership concentration and investor protection legislation. Low and high degrees of centralization yield less concentrated ownership and more investo...

What role does the fourth retirement pillar of home ownership and private saving play in rich nations? Does this asset-based welfare spread the risks of retirement provision or does it distort consumption patterns and fail to improve the non-housing consumption of the elderly? Is it associated with more or less inequality of retirement consumption? This paper examines the role of home ownership...

BACKGROUND During the last decade, donor governments and international agencies have increasingly emphasized the importance of building the capacity of indigenous health care organizations as part of strengthening health systems and ensuring sustainability. In 2009, the U.S. Global Health Initiative made country ownership and capacity building keystones of U.S. health development assistance, an...

Mongolia’s mass privatization program was implanted in a country that lacked the very basic institutions of capitalism. This paper examines the effects of competition and ownership on the efficiency of the newly privatized enterprises, using a representative sample of enterprises and controlling for possible selection biases. Competition has quantitatively large effects; perfectly competitive f...

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t There is considerable variation across countries in both the extent to which large publicly listed firms are family-owned and the dominance of such family-owned firms in stock markets. The literature presents competing theoretical viewpoints on what influences such country-level variation. On one hand, institutional economists suggest that institutional voi...

Livestock ownership has the potential to improve child nutrition through various mechanisms, although direct evaluations of household livestock and child stunting status are uncommon. We conducted an analysis of Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) datasets from Ethiopia (2011), Kenya (2008-2009), and Uganda (2010) among rural children under 5 years of age to compare stunting status across level...