L20 - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior: GeneralReturn

In this article we analyze medium- and long-term effects of firm break-up (and subsequent change in ownership) on its profitability and productivity. We use an extensive data-set of the Czech firms for the period 1996-2005. We employ the propensity score based matching methodology to account for potential endogeneity. Our results show that initial effects of the firm break-up are positive but they vanish in five to seven years after the break-up. Hence, the break-up of large and less efficient companies delivers a positive effect on corporate performance for a period of time. The effect is not permanent, though. Subsequent development in profitability and productivity is likely affected by ownership structure, corporate governance and other micro-level factors.

The aim of the paper is to set the agency problem into a broad context of New Institutional Economics with an emphasis on historical connections. In the first section, I explain the historical evolution of basic theoretical concepts like the theory of firm, the theory of market process and the theory of property rights. The second section is dedicated to the explanation of the general concept of agency problem extended with the problem of asymmetric information leading to adverse selection and the problem of moral hazard, in context of previous historical connections. In the last section, the author provides some suggestions for the further theoretical and empirical research.

This paper uses new firm-level data to examine the effects of breakups of the Czech firms and their subsequent privatization on corporate performance. Unlike the existing literature, which analyzes breakups almost exclusively in advanced economies, we control for accompanying ownership changes and the fact that spinoffs and ownership are endogenous variables. We find that breakups increase the firm's profitability but do not alter its scale of operations, while the effect of privatization depends on the resulting ownership structure - sometime improving performance and sometime bringing about decline. The effects of privatization are hence less clear-cut than suggested in earlier studies. Methodologically, our study provides evidence that it is important to control for changes in ownership when analyzing divestitures and control for endogeneity, selection and data attrition when analyzing the effects of breakups and privatization.

The Czech economy has been characterized by a rapidly increasing external income balance deficit since 1998, which was caused by an increasing outflow of FDI earnings. The paper analyses factors, which determine the total amount of FDI earnings in a host economy and their subsequent division into reinvested earnings and repatriated profits. Three main factors are examined: total FDI stock in the economy and its structure, the FDI rate of return and the FDI financial life cycle. Growing total FDI stock, which reaches 51 % of Czech GDP, is the most influential factor because the FDI rate of return has been approximately stable exceeding 10 %. An outstanding amount of reinvested earnings in the Czech economy negatively influences the current account deficit, which exceeds the GDP 5 % benchmark rate, although reinvested earnings do not represent actual financial outflows.