Despite the longstanding insider trading debate, there is little empirical research on insider trading laws, especially in a comparative context. The article attempts to fill that gap. I find that countries with more prohibitive insider trading laws have more diffuse equity ownership, more...

The article presents a simple agency model of the relationship between corporate valuation and insider trading laws. The article then investigates the model’s three testable hypotheses using firm-level data from a cross-section of developed countries. I find that more stringent insider trading...

The rapidly growing literature studying the relationship between legal origin, investor protection, and finance has stimulated an important debate in academic circles. It has also generated a number of applied research projects and strong policy statements. This paper discusses the implications,...

Financial depth does not fully reflect how well the financial intermediaries serve to economic agents in stimulating economic growth. Additional aspects of financial system such as access, efficiency and stability should be taken into account in order to shed light into the relationship between...

We examine the relations between national cultures, the multinationality of the firm and its holdings of cash. We develop several hypotheses from well known corporate finance theories and theories of the multinational firm, positing that cultural factors as well as the degree of multinationality...

We use a spatial competition based model in a two-stage game setup to assess whether equilibrium in exchange rates among the leading currencies is attainable. We show that a stable equilibrium can be reached in the case of two leading currencies, but not in the case of three. In our model,...

We examine how Russian enterprises do business with one another, focusing on the strategies used to obtain efficiency and predictability in their transactions. Using survey data, the paper analyzes the relative importance of relational contracting, self-enforcement, enterprise networks, private...

Most papers on banking focus on profitability and cost efficiency as measures of performance. In doing so, these papers ignore the fact that, unlike in the manufacturing and services sector industries, the long term viability of a bank depends more on its ability to assess credit worthiness of...

This paper examines the importance of agglomeration economies and institutions vis-à-vis initial conditions and factor endowments in explaining the locational choice of foreign investors. Using a unique panel data set for 25 transition economies between 1990 and 1998, we find that the main...

Using bank-level data from India, for nine years (1995-96 to 2003-04), we examine banks’ behavior in the context of emerging credit markets. Our results indicate that the credit market behavior of banks in emerging markets is determined by past trends, the diversity of the potential pool of...