Corporate governance is one of the most topical and controversial areas of business and finance. This article provides an overview of the questions that it raises and proposed policy responses. It points to the diversity in systems of corporate governance around the world, the apparently...

Hackethal and Schmidt (2003) criticize a large body of literature on the financing of corporate sectors in different countries that questions some of the distinctions conventionally drawn between financial systems. Their criticism is directed against the use of net flows of finance and they...

Corporate governance is one of the most topical and controversial areas of business and finance. This article provides an overview of the questions that it raises and proposed policy responses. It points to the diversity in systems of corporate governance around the world, the apparently...

A significant recent development has been the extension of market processes to activities which were previously provided by the public sector. A central feature of newly privatized markets is the emergence of widespread forms of contracting. Explicit contracting is used where in the past...

Patterns of corporate control vary markedly across countries. This paper examines the reasons for these differences and their consequences for corporate performance. It finds that they primarily result from differences in the ownership of firms and their legal forms. These affect the relative...

As the regulation of public companies has progressively tightened in recent years, many companies have chosen to switch to stock exchanges with lower regulatory requirements. We analyse the consequences of switching for smaller quoted companies, using the unusual regulatory environment in...