State ownership and international expansion: The S‐curve relationship

摘要

We study how state ownership affects the international expansion of emerging‐market firms. Building on agency theory and the resource‐based view, we propose an S‐curve relationship: Firms with a low level of state ownership have a limited level ofinternational expansion, those with a medium level of state ownership have an increasing level, and those with a high level of state ownership have a decreasing level. This S‐curve is the outcome of the interaction between the “hindering hand” of state ownership, arising from multilevel agency problems, and the “helping hand,” arising from state‐ownership advantages. Analyses of 674 publicly traded firms from 16 emerging markets support these ideas and reveal that the inflection points in the S‐curve appear at state‐ownership levels of 19 and 43%.