This paper attempts to shed a new light on the economics and the law of corporate governance. It so does by taking stock of the weaknesses of the standard account of how law quot;mattersquot; for separation of ownership and control. This account fails to explain comparative corporate governance....

This book reappraises the existing framework for economic analysis of corporate law. The standard approach to the legal foundations of corporate governance is based on the 'law matters' thesis, according to which corporate law promotes separation of ownership and control by protecting minority...

The corporate governance debate mainly deals with the effectiveness of techniques to protect shareholders from the controllers' misbehaviour. This paper takes a different approach. Focussing on self-dealing, it shows that effective strategies to protect investors from expropriation differ, and...

Why do some countries suffer from backward financial institutions and weak corporate governance rules? We show that, even if, overall, the economy would benefit corporate governance reforms, not all the agents would stand to gain from the improvement. In particular, entrepreneurs and firms that...

This article explores the extent to which social capital theory can respond to the crisis in the subprime mortgage markets. Building on the groundbreaking theories of Robert Putnam in his book BOWLING ALONE: THE COLLAPSE AND REVIVAL OF AMERICAN COMMUNITY, this article seeks to explore the role...

This paper offers the first comprehensive analysis of legal change in the protection of shareholder and creditor rights in transition economies and its impact on the propensity of firms to raise external finance. Following La Porta et al. (1998), the paper constructs an expanded set of legal...

Over recent years, a number of regulators have launched proposals to expand the obligation to disclose major share ownership in listed companies. This article shows that these are not stand-alone developments. Using a unique dataset comprising data from 25 countries over 11 years (1995-2005) and...

This paper analyses the role of the convergence of national corporate governance codes affecting listed public limited companies within the EU member states. It assesses this process against the need for protection of stakeholders and public interests. The first chapter looks to company...

Corporate governance has become a popular topic in recent years. Although much attention has been given to corporate governance in the United States and other Western countries as a result of recent scandals, and in Japan and other East Asian countries because of the financial crisis that...