We study the relation between state ownership and cash holdings in China’s share-issue privatized firms from 2000 to 2012. We find that the level of cash holdings increases as state ownership declines. For the average firm in our sample, a 10 percentage-point decline in state ownership leads to an increase of about RMB 55 million in cash holdings. This negative relation can be attributable to the soft-budget constraint (SBC) inherent in state ownership. The Chinese financial system is dominated by the state-owned banks, an environment very conducive for the SBC effect. We further examine and quantify the effect of state ownership on the value of cash and find that the marginal value of cash increases as state ownership declines. The next RMB added to cash reserves of the average firm is valued at RMB 0.96 by the market. The marginal value of cash in firms with zero state ownership is RMB 0.36 higher than in firms with majority state ownership. The SBC effect exacerbates agency problems inherent in state-controlled enterprises, contributing to their lower value of cash.

In this study, we employ the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) data collected in 2002, 2005, and 2009 for 21499 firms from 27 Eastern European and Central Asian countries to examine firm-level growth constraints faced by privatized firms versus those faced by the originally (de novo) private firms. We find that the de novo firms experience significantly higher financial, corruption, and legal obstacles than the privatized firms. We further document that, even though faced with more obstacles in the business environment, the de novo firms outperform the privatized firms. One explanation is that the profit motive of the de novo firms is organic, whereas the profit motive of the privatized firms is acquired. The organic profit motive may be powerful enough for the de novo firms to overcome more difficulties in the business environment and excel. Our study is the first in the privatization literature to go beyond performance comparisons and examine firm-level growth constraints.

This paper examines the impact of financial reporting practices on corruption obstacles for about 150,000 firms across 143 mostly developing countries from 2006 to 2019. We document a strong positive relationship between the production of audited financial statements (AFS) and corruption obstacles (CO) faced by the firm. We argue that in a corrupt business environment, rent-seeking bureaucrats use the credible financial information to optimize their bribe demands. Our baseline results remain robust after addressing endogeneity concerns. We further show that country-level institutional quality has a moderating effect on the AFS-CO relation. The evidence from surveying entrepreneurs also provides qualitative support for our empirical findings. Our study sheds light on a previously under-explored adverse consequence of transparency - exposure to corrupt bureaucrats where institutions are weak.