To accurately gauge the flow of firms into and retained by stock exchanges, we add targets of public acquirers to the listing count. For the U.S., this merger-adjustment rivals IPOs in its impact on listing dynamics, and it eliminates...
We examine whether institutional investors affect corporate governance by analyzing portfolio holdings of institutions in companies from 23 countries during the period 2003-2008. We find that firm-level governance is positively...
Historically, the evolution and growth of American corporate law has occurred with only limited and sporadic attention to international corporate governance regimes. This article considers some possible reasons for the relative...
We construct a firm-level governance index that increases with minority shareholder protection. Compared to U.S. matching firms, only 12.68% of foreign firms have a higher index. The value of foreign firms falls as their index...
Settlements reached in 2005 in securities litigation involving Enron and WorldCom highlighted the financial risks faced by outside directors of public companies. We argue elsewhere that Enron and WorldCom, as instances where...
Systemic risk poses a classic ?public goods? problem. All nations want systemic stability, but most would prefer that other nations pay for it, allowing them to ?free ride.? Moreover, because global financial institutions can park...
Shareholders have long complained that top executives are overpaid by corporate directors irrespective of their performance. Largely powerless to stop these practices, in 2002, they prevailed upon the U.K. Parliament to adopt...
In this paper, we examine independent directors as a legal transplant from dispersed ownership systems to concentrated ownership ones. We focus on Continental Europe, Japan, Brazil, Russia, India and China. Our main thesis is that...
