A Regulation of Bids for Dual Class Shares. Implication: Two Shares—One Price

This paper examines the consequences of a specific regulatory restriction on bids for dual class shares. Shares of different classes are often argued to have different prices because a premium will be paid to the superior voting shares in the case of a tender offer. This paper assumes a setup where regulations require that a tender offer pays the same relative premium to both classes of shares. In this setup, it is shown that both classes will sell at the same price as long as there is a strictly positive probability that either the current management is sufficiently strong or that a sufficiently strong rival will show up. Furthermore, under this weak condition the regulation is socially optimal in the sense that the management that provides the highest total firm value will be the management of the firm. Finally, the regulation is shown to favor (or protect) the holders of restricted voting shares and this is not necessarily at the expense of the holders of superior voting shares.The practical interest of this paper derives from the fact that some European countries have adopted different regulatory restrictions on bids for dual class shares. This has more or less occurred due to proposed EU Directives. The regulation examined in this paper applies to tender offers in Denmark. Empirical results on the voting premium in Denmark are shown to be consistent with the theoretical results in this paper.     

Political Institutions and Pollution: Evidence from Coal‐Fired Power Generation

What is the relationship between political institutions and air pollution generated by the power sector? Here we focus on the association between democracy and power generated from coal, the most polluting of all fossil fuels. Using a new dataset on coal‐fired power plants commissioned between 1980 and 2016 in 71 countries, we find that the relationship between democracy and coal varies according to the environmental Kuznets curve logic. Democratic political institutions at lower levels of economic development are correlated with increased commissioning of coal power plants, as governments seek to appeal to an electorate prioritizing economic growth and affordable energy access. As a country becomes richer, democracy comes to have a negative association with coal power, as clean air becomes a more salient issue for the public.     

How Do Sectoral Interests Shape Distributive Politics? Evidence from Gasoline and Diesel Subsidy Reforms

Sectoral interests play an important role in distributive politics, but their influence is difficult to measure. We compare the effect of international oil prices on subsidies for domestic gasoline and diesel consumption. Because diesel is used by a smaller number of organized agricultural and transportation interests, they are more capable of collective action than the dispersed beneficiaries of gasoline subsidies. The conventional wisdom holds that sectoral interests could mobilize to stop reform (e.g., price increases, deregulation). Challenging this view, we consider the possibility that sectoral interests promote reform by facilitating the targeted allocation of compensation and exemptions. An empirical analysis of gasoline and diesel prices, 1991–2012, strongly supports the second hypothesis: diesel prices respond to international oil prices more strongly than do gasoline prices. Quantitative tests and case studies allow us to explore causal mechanisms, verify that the gasoline‐diesel difference is related to actual policy reforms, and reject alternative explanations.     

Das ABGB und das Sondermietrecht – die Entwicklung der vergangenen 100?Jahre

Aus Anlass des im Vorjahr vielfach gefeierten 200. Geburtstags des ABGB zeichnet der Beitrag die Entwicklung des Mietrechts nach, wobei – diesem Anlass entsprechend – das Bestandrecht des ABGB im Mittelpunkt steht. Die Rückschau konzentriert sich auf die Entwicklungslinien im Gesetzesrecht und beschr?nkt sich daher – mangels eines Legislativgeschehens zum Mietrecht im ersten Geltungsjahrhundert des ABGB – auf die vergangenen 100 Jahre. Die judikative Ausgestaltung der Gesetzeslage wird nur in gro?en Zügen angesprochen; auch hier liegt der Fokus in der Rechtsprechung zum ABGB-Bestandrecht. Der Aufsatz ist die modifizierte Fassung eines Beitrags des Autors zu der vonFischer-Czermak/Hopf/Kathrein/Schauer herausgegebenen Festschrift „200 Jahre ABGB“.     

Policy innovation in local jurisdictions: Testing for neighborhood influence in school choice policies

Before making difficult decisions, individuals tend to collect information on decision makers in reference groups. With respect to policy innovations in a decentralized public sector, this may give rise to positive neighborhood influence on adoption decisions. In this paper, U.S. school district data are used to show that decision makers indeed are heavily affected by decision makers in reference groups. The policy innovation under consideration is inter-district public school choice. The results suggest that if a given district's neighbors' expected benefits from adopting school choice policies increase, this substantially increases the original district's probability of adoption. The paper thus supports the view that the diffusion of policy innovations is stimulated by horizontal interaction among local governments.     

An analysis of the relationship between the additionality of CDM projects and their contribution to sustainable development

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) allows industrialised countries to use credits from greenhouse gas abatement projects in developing countries in order to fulfil their own emission reduction commitments. There has been mounting evidence that the CDM’s ability to fulfil its goals as stipulated by the Kyoto Protocol—contributing to the sustainable development of the host countries and delivering real, measurable and additional emission reductions—is less than satisfactory. In this article, an evaluation is made of CDM projects’ likelihood of being additional by assessing the impact Certified Emission Reductions have on the Internal Rate of Return of the individual projects. In addition, the projects’ sustainable development benefits are assessed by using a multi-criteria analysis. In a final step, the relationship between the projects’ additionality and sustainability contribution is assessed and a trade-off between these two CDM goals is established, revealing a potential inherent conflict in how the current mechanism works. The analysis is based on a systematic evaluation of 40 registered CDM projects in India.     

Weak Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights in China: integrating political,cultural and structural explanations

The discrepancy between de jure and de facto protection of intellectual property rights in China remains a heatedly debated topic. Unfortunately, political motivations have distorted the debate from its very beginning, which has not only resulted in a tendency for the different explanations to be played off against each other, but has also reinforced their specific flaws and biases. This study addresses these problems by advancing and integrating the three main explanatory frameworks for explaining the situation. The resulting integrated framework finds that structural factors such as bureaucratic fragmentation and political decentralization matter most in practical terms, but their durability cannot be understood without putting them into context. The findings also suggest that, contrary to most predictions, the future development of intellectual property protection in China might not follow the path laid down by other countries that have modernized in the past.