The Journal of Finance Forthcoming Article Abstract

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Abstract:
We investigate the influence of political and financial factors on the decision to privatize government-owned firms using firm-level data from India. We find that the government significantly delays privatization in regions where the governing party faces more competition from opposition parties. This result is robust to firm- specific factors and regional characteristics. The results also suggest that political patronage is important as no government- owned firm located in the home state of the minister in charge is ever privatized. Using political variables as an instrument for the endogenous privatization decision, we find that privatization has a positive impact on firm performance.