In the last dozen years, economists have produced a considerable body of research suggesting that the historical origin of a country’s laws is highly correlated with a broad range of its legal rules and regulations, as well as with economic outcomes. Much of this research has dealt with rules...

This paper compares the extent of common ownership in the US and the EU stock markets, with a particular focus on differences in the ap-plicable ownership transparency requirements. Most empirical research on common ownership to date has focused on US issuers, largely relying on ownership data...

The ownership nationality of large US multinational companies plays an implicit but important role in the current debate over how such companies should be taxed. This paper identifies that role and investigates what is actually known about where these companies’ shareholders reside

There are two main sources of confusion in the public corporate governance debate. One is the confusion about the role of public policy intervention. The other is a lack of empirical knowledge about the corporate landscape where rules are supposed to be implemented and the functioning of...

This paper provides a framework for analysing the character and degree of ownership engagement by institutional investors. It argues that the general term “institutional investor” in itself doesn’t say very much about the quality or degree of ownership engagement. It is therefore an...

We adopt a novel approach to explain why firms opt for or against CEO duality and the value implications of this choice. Exploiting the 2009 amendments to Regulation S-K, we provide unique evidence on the first-time disclosure of the reasons firms state for combining (separating) the roles of...

The desirability of a dual-class structure, which enables founders of public companies to retain a lock on control while holding a minority of the company's equity capital, has long been the subject of a heated debate. This debate has focused on whether dual-class stock is an efficient capital...