We follow the evolution of ownership structure in a sample of 80 Israeli companies that unified their dual-class shares in the 1990s, and compare it with a control sample of firms that maintained their dual share structure at least until 2000. Our main findings are as follows. First, controlling...

Drawing on a newly-collected data set on bond yields, macroeconomic variables, and news of various categories for a panel of emerging markets, we provide the first comparative analysis of the determinants of sovereign bond spreads in the first era of financial globalization and bond finance...

This Paper challenges the North and Weingast (1989) view that institutional reforms and better protection of property rights lead to economic growth through a reduction in interest rates, and that a mechanism of this type accounted for Britain’s ascendancy to economic supremacy. We show that,...

The extent to which business groups ever existed in the United States and, if they did exist, the reasons for their disappearance are poorly understood. In this paper we use hitherto unexplored historical sources to construct a comprehensive data set to address this issue. We find that (1)...

Using a newly-constructed data set on Israeli Initial Public Offering (IPO) firms in the 1990s, we study costs and benefits of universal banking. We find that a firm whose equity was underwritten by a bank-affiliated underwriter, when the same bank was also a large creditor of the firm in the...

We shed new light on the corporate governance role of institutional investors in markets where concentrated ownership and business groups are prevalent. When companies have controlling shareholders, institutional investors, as minority shareholders, can play only a limited role in corporate...

Economic theory points to five parties active in disciplining management of poorly performing firms: holders of large share blocks, acquirers of new blocks, bidders in take-overs, non-executive directors, and investors during periods of financial distress. This Paper reports the first...

Financial frictions have been identified as key factors affecting both short-term economic fluctuations and long-term growth. An important policy question therefore is whether institutional reforms can reduce financial frictions and, if so, which reforms are best? We address this question by...