Employing a new method of industry tests we examine investment bank governance. Most of the findings reject the view that banks are governed suboptimally over a sample period from 1990 through 2003. CEO pay is large and significantly sensitive to stock price performance, and stock price...

This study employs the rolling bicorrelation statistic to measure the degree of stock price deviations from a random walk for the stock markets of 50 countries over the period 1995-2005. We find that stock markets in economies with low per capita GDP in general experience more persistent price...

Passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 followed hard on the collapses of Enron and WorldCom. Waste makes haste. It was legislation drafted in anger. Five years later, and after three official reports, US government agencies and financial market participants worry that the New York may have...

This study examines the relation between excess auditor remuneration and the implied required rate of return (IRR hereafter) on equity capital in global markets. We conjecture that when auditor remuneration is excessively large, investors may perceive the auditor to be economically bonded to the...

This paper examines whether the increased legal and reputational constraints associated with cross-listing in the U.S. reduces the propensity of insiders to trade on private information. We find that the directors in both domestic and cross-listed firms trade on private information, particularly...

Using a sample of newly initiated American Depository Receipt (ADR) programs over the period 2000 and 2004, this paper examines the effect of Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) on the cross-listing decision and the value consequences of cross-listing by foreign firms. We find that the passage of SOX did...

This paper investigates the effects of ownership concentration, foreign ownership and audit quality on the amount of firm-specific information incorporated into share prices (as measured by stock price synchronicity). With a large sample of firms listed on the emerging Chinese market over the...

This paper investigates the long-run stock returns of privatization initial public offering (IPO) firms using a sample of 241 privatization IPOs from 42 countries during the period 1981-2003. We compare one-, three-, and five-year holding period returns of privatization IPOs to those of the...

This paper investigates a little studied but common mechanism that firms use to obtain state favors: business owners themselved seeking election to top office. Using Thailand as a research setting, we find that the more business owners rely on government conccessions or the wealthier they are,...