Using a newly developed database for 8 transition economies, this paper examines whether reforms and political freedom are important for foreign bank entry. The paper provides strong evidence that foreign bank entry positively responds to reform measures. We also find some evidence for the...

This paper analyses whether societal norms help to explain cross-country differences in financial development. We analyze whether societal norms in addition to legal institutions have an impact on financial development. We address the implications of the inclusion of societal norms for the...

We explain the development of stock markets by both legal and societal determinants and analyze the relevance of both determinants in the Levine-Zervos (1998) cross-sectional growth regressions. We argue that the legal indicators as developed by La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer and Vishny...

This paper examines the investment-uncertainty relationship for a panel of Dutch firms. The uncertainty proxy is derived from daily stock market prices of individual firms. We show that some macro indicators, in combination with firm fixed effects, are able to give a reasonable explanation of...

Using data from a survey of 1097 Dutch firms we investigate the relation between growth of the firm and uncertainty. We focus on the impact of uncertainty on various types of investment, employment demand, and expected maturity of the firm. The special feature of the survey is that it includes...

This paper investigates the effect of uncertainty on economic growth. We construct measures of export uncertainty, government policy uncertainty and price uncertainty to augment a growth model, and using econometric techniques we test for robustness of the effects of these measure on economic...

Abstract We contribute to the debate on the interpretation of investment-cash flow sensitivities by including uncertainty measures in both a simple theoretical investment model and an empirical illustration for Dutch firm-level data. Using a slightly modified version of the Kaplan-Zingales...

Abstract We examine the effect of business group affiliation on corporate investment behavior in India. We use a data set containing 684 Indian listed companies for the 1989-1997 period. We estimate a simple investment equation and find evidence that cash flow has a positive effect on investment...

This paper contributes to the empirical finance-growth literature by examining the relationship between financial depth, banking sector development, stock market development and economic growth in China. After an extensive survey on recent financial reforms in China, we apply Granger...

This paper analyzes equilibrium rationing on credit markets in the case of gains from waiting to acquire information about the future profitability of investment. We compare the competitive outcome with the socially optimal level of investment. We show that the opportunity to postpone investment...