This paper surveys research on corporate governance, with special attention to the importance of legal protection of investors and of ownership concentration in corporate governance systems around the world.

A Survey of Corporate Governance

This article surveys research on corporate governance, with special attention to the importance of legal protection of investors and of ownership concentration in corporate governance systems around the world. CORPORATE GOVERNANCE DEALS WITH the ways in which suppliers of finance to corporations assure themselves of getting a return on their investment. How do the suppliers of finance get managers to return some of the profits to them? How do they make sure that managers do not steal the capital they supply or invest it in bad projects? How do suppliers of finance control managers? At first glance, it is not entirely obvious why the suppliers of capital get anything back. After all, they part with their money, and have little to contribute to the enterprise afterward. The professional managers or entrepreneurs who run the firms might as well abscond with the money. Although they sometimes do, usually they do not. Most advanced market economies have solved the problem of corporate governance at least reasonably well, in that they have assured the flows of enormous amounts of capital to firms, and actual repatriation of profits to the providers of finance. But this does not imply that they have solved the corporate governance problem perfectly, or that the corporate governance mechanisms cannot be improved. In fact, the subject of corporate governance is of enormous practical impor

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Wireless Communications

A Course in Game Theory presents the main ideas of game theory at a level suitable for graduate students and advanced undergraduates, emphasizing the theory's foundations and interpretations of its basic concepts. The authors provide precise definitions and full proofs of results, sacrificing generalities and limiting the scope of the material in order to do so. The text is organized in four parts: strategic games, extensive games with perfect information, extensive games with imperfect information, and coalitional games. It includes over 100 exercises.

A Course in Game Theory

Does finance affect economic growth? A number of studies have identified a positive correlation between the level of development of a country's financial sector and the rate of growth of its per capita income. As has been noted elsewhere, the observed correlation does not necessarily imply a causal relationship. This paper examines whether financial development facilitates economic growth by scrutinizing one rationale for such a relationship; that financial development reduces the costs of external finance to firms. Specifically, we ask whether industrial sectors that are relatively more in need of external finance develop disproportionately faster in countries with more developed financial markets. We find this to be true in a large sample of countries over the 1980s. We show this result is unlikely to be driven by omitted variables, outliers, or reverse causality.

/pdf/financial-dependence-and-growth-2meheeba1z.pdf

Financial Dependence and Growth

Laffont and Tirole (LT hereinafter) have written a much-needed book that brings together the theory and practice of telecommunications regulation, especially interconnection pricing, in an era of increasing competition It is almost a clich6 to observe that the work of these authors, who have produced so much prominent research in this area, is insightful, comprehensive, and elegant; yet such descriptions are needed to aptly characterize this book The main design feature of the book is a separation of the text from technical boxes that present formal models This is a laudable plan and it succeeds in making much of the book accessible to those who are familiar with the issues but are not professional economists It is still fairly technical reading and in places cannot be well understood without venturing into the technical boxes Certainly only professional economists with some prior understanding of the models can fully digest the material But for professionals and nonprofessionals alike the effort of reading is rewarded as the text lays bare basic economic lessons that are often misunderstood or lost in the contentiousness and complex details of regulatory practice Even to those who are very familiar with the material, the book is worth reading simply for the enjoyment of witnessing the depth and breadth of LT's mastery of the material, and their customary eloquence in putting it all together This book should be read by every consultant, industry participant, and academician with an interest in telecommunications regulation; by any economist who wants to become acquainted with the revolution occurring in the industry; and by the technical staffs of national regulatory agencies It may be too technical for generalists and state-level regulatory commissions, but it should at least be skimmed by everyone involved in regulating the industry

Competition in telecommunications

Society’s demands for individual and corporate social responsibility as an alternative response to market and distributive failures are becoming increasingly prominent. We first draw on recent developments in the “psychology and economics” of prosocial behavior to shed light on this trend, which reflects a complex interplay of genuine altruism, social or self image concerns, and material incentives. We then link individual concerns to corporate social responsibility, contrasting three possible understandings of the term: the adoption of a more long-term perspective by firms, the delegated exercise of prosocial behavior on behalf of stakeholders, and insider-initiated corporate philanthropy. For both individuals and firms we discuss the benefits, costs and limits of socially responsible behavior as a means to further societal goals.

/pdf/individual-and-corporate-social-responsibility-3vj4z7bfgq.pdf

Individual and Corporate Social Responsibility

In Competition in Telecommunications, Jean-Jacques Laffont and Jean Tirole analyze regulatory reform and the emergence of competition in network industries using the state-of-the-art theoretical tools of industrial organization, political economy, and the economics of incentives. The book opens with background information for the reader who is unfamiliar with current issues in the telecommunication industry. The following sections focus on four central aspects of the recent deregulatory movement: the introduction of incentive regulation; one-way access; the special nature of competition in a industry requiring two-way access; and universal service, in particular, the use of engineering models to compute subsidies and the design of universal service auctions.

Competition in Telecommunications

Systemic risk refers to the propagation of a bank's economic distress to other economic agents linked to that bank through financial transactions. Banking authorities often prevent systemic risk through an implicit insurance of interbank claims, or by reducing interbank transactions and centralizing banks' liquidity management. This paper investigates whether the flexability afforded by decentralized bank interactions can be preserved while protecting the central banks from the necessity of conducting undesired rescue operations. It develops a model in which decentralized interbank leading is motivated by peer monitoring. In this context, the paper derives the optimal prudential rules, and, in particular, looks at the impact of interbank monitoring on the solvency and liquidity ratios of borrowing and lending banks. Last, it provides conditions which a Too Big To Fail policy is or is not justified and studies the possibility of propagation of a bank's liquidity shock throughout the financial system. Copyright 1996 by Ohio State University Press.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2077918.pdf

Interbank lending and systemic risk

This paper addresses a basic, yet unresolved question : Do claims on private assets provide sufficient liquidity for an efficient functioning of the productive sector? Or does the State have a role in creating liquidity and regulating it either through adjustments in the stock of government securities or by other means?

Jean Tirole

Papers

Competition in telecommunications

Individual and Corporate Social Responsibility

Competition in Telecommunications

Interbank lending and systemic risk

Private and Public Supply of Liquidity