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...

Why should differences between regulatory and accounting policies be mitigated? Because mitigating such differences could facilitate convergence – as well as financial stability. The paper “Fair Value Accounting and Procyclicality: Mitigating Regulatory and Accounting Policy Differences...

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...

The use of equity derivatives to conceal economic ownership of shares (“hidden ownership”) is increasingly drawing attention from the financial community, as is the exercise of voting power without corresponding economic interest (“empty voting”). Market participants and commentators...

The use of equity derivatives to conceal economic ownership of shares (“hidden ownership”) is increasingly drawing attention from the financial community, as is the exercise of voting power without corresponding economic interest (“empty voting”). Market participants and commentators...

Text presented at the 19ª Asamblea Anual del Grupo Regional de América Latina y el Caribe (GRULAC), of the World Savings Banks Institute, La Habana, Cuba, 4-5 November 2013. It mentions some of the more recent international reform initiatives in particular those linked to the Basel Committee...

Ten years ago, sovereign bond markets almost universally adopted so-called collective action clauses after years of public sector pressure for more efficient procedures to cope with sovereign default and restructuring. A second policy initiative, the standard appointment of a trustee to...

Over the last ten years, institutions such as the IMF have launched several initiatives to change market practice with respect to sovereign bond contract drafting in order to ease restructuring after defaults. The first of these, the universal adoption of collective action clauses, was embraced...

Sovereign bonds are notoriously hard to enforce. What little rights bondholders have can be vested either collectively or individually. It seems that investors, particularly in the US market, traditionally had a preference for the latter, which hindered financial market reform projects, such as...

The universal adoption of collective action clauses (CACs) was the most promising reform proposal in recent debates on sovereign debt crisis management. Academics and the public sector had been promoting CACs since 1995, yet market practice did not begin to change until 2003. This delay is often...