We test the ‘law matters’ and ‘legal origin’claims using a newly created panel dataset measuring legal change over time in a sample of developed and developing countries. Our dataset improves on previous ones by avoiding country-specific variables in favour of functional and generic...

A major purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of poor governance or ‘state fragility’ in African countries on their overall economic and agrarian performance. The results of our econometric analysis show that a higher level of public security is conducive to lower levels of...

A major purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of poor governance or ‘state fragility’ in African countries on their overall economic and agrarian performance. The results of our econometric analysis show that a higher level of public security is conducive to lower levels of...

Legal origins theory suggests that law reform,strengthening shareholder and creditor rights, should enhance financial development. We use recently created datasets measuring legal change over time in a sample of 25 developing, developed and transition countries to test this claim. We find that...

We use recently created longitudinal datasets measuring legal change over time to test whether the strengthening of shareholder and creditor rights leads to greater financial development. The hypothesis that law matters to financial development is rejected, both for a sample of 5 countries...

This paper analyses a longitudinal dataset on legal protection of shareholders over a 36 year period, 1970-2005 for four advanced countries, UK, France, Germany and the US. It examines two aspects of the legal origin hypothesis - whether shareholder protection is higher in the common law...

This paper analysed the OECD data on employment protection for 23 OECD countries over the time span 1990-2008 on the basis of alternative dynamic panel data models and panel causality tests and examines the validity of the neo-liberal argument that strictness of employment protection hurts...

This paper analyses the relationship between financial development (as measured by expansion of domestic credit to private sector relative to GDP) and growth for a sample of 65 less developed countries over a long period, 1980-2006. Using causality tests at various lag-orders we find a strong...

This paper examines the state of labour protection in four countries (UK, USA, France and Germany) during 1970-2006. It supports the contention of the legal-origin theory that UK and USA (common law countries) intervene less in the labour market and grant less protection to labourers. It also...

This study re-examines the theory of legal-origin on the basis of a new longitudinal dataset for four OECD countries (UK, USA, France and Germany) over a long time span 1970-2005. It observes that the civil law countries (France and Germany) provided better minority shareholder protection and...