Corporate governance following mass privatization

Using vouchers to privatize state-owned firms was an innovative but controversial aspect of transition. In the Czech Republic, voucher privatization created a large group of minority shareholders who coexisted with large shareholder-managers who controlled firms. Critics allege that the structure of shareholdings and regulatory failures allowed pervasive theft of corporate assets, much of it financed by irresponsible bank lending, and led to a financial crisis and an economic downturn. I argue that neither anecdotal evidence of managerial malfeasance nor the theories of tunneling and looting p... Mehr ...