We investigate the relationship between media sentiment and international equity prices using a new dataset of 4 million news articles published between 1991 and 2015. Three key results emerge. First, news sentiment robustly predicts (future) daily returns around the world. However, we find a...

In this article, I explain the inadequacy of our current state of knowledge regarding the effectiveness of antitrust policy towards mergers. I then discuss the types of data that one must collect in order to be able to perform an analysis of the effectiveness of antitrust policy. There are two...

This paper presents a non-technical discussion of economic issues that arise due to links between competition (or anti-trust) policy and international trade. While recent advances in international trade theory have borrowed heavily from the industrial organization literature, this work has a...

Recently competition policy has become an important trade policy issue, since many policy makers now see competition policy as an important instrument to secure market access' to foreign markets. This paper analyzes this issue both from a theoretical point of view and from the review of the...

Many firms encourage employees to own company stock through share plans that subsidize the price at favorable rates, but even so many employees do not buy shares. Using a new survey of employees in a multinational with a share ownership plan, we find considerable variation in joining among...

How persistent are the effects of legal institutions adopted or inherited in the distant past? A substantial literature argues that legal origins have persistent effects that explain clear differences in investor protections and financial development around the world today (La Porta et al, 1998,...

We examine the differential response of establishments to the recent global financial crisis with particular emphasis on the role of foreign ownership. Using a worldwide establishment panel dataset, we investigate how multinational subsidiaries around the world responded to the crisis relative...

Which public policies and ownership structures enhance the governance of banks? This paper constructs a new database on the ownership of banks internationally and then assesses the ramifications of ownership, shareholder protection laws, and supervisory/regulatory policies on bank valuations....

This paper examines legal rules covering protection of corporate shareholders and creditors, the origin of these rules, and the quality of their enforcement in 49 countries. The results show that common law countries generally have the best, and French civil law countries the worst, legal...

Large institutional investors own an increasing share of the equity markets in the U.S. The implications of this development for financial markets are still unclear. The paper presents novel empirical evidence that ownership by large institutions predicts higher volatility and greater noise in...