Has there been convergence of corporate governance systems? There has been a great deal of controversy on this issue in the last ten years, and it is likely that this debate is to re-emerge in the context of the current financial crisis. In this paper I use a new quantitative methodology...

“Comparative law and finance” quantifies differences in the laws governing the business enterprise in various countries. The resulting data can be used to test which legal institutions (if any) matter for financial development. Until recently only cross-sectional data were available. We...

This paper is the first one that uses a panel data of different types of shareholder protection in order to examine (i) the effect of such laws on stock market development and (ii) the convergence of shareholder protection laws through cross-border mergers and acquisitions. We find significant...

Taxonomies are frequently used in the literature of corporate law and governance. This chapter outlines four types of typologies: limited typologies that may either focus on legal or non-legal questions, and general typologies that may either have a legal or a non-legal focus. Subsequently, it...

The leximetric research on shareholder protection can contribute to core questions of comparative company law. For example, such research may be able to show whether or not there is a trend to increase shareholder power across countries. It can also provide us with tools to confirm or challenge...

This paper uses a new quantitative methodology (quot;numerical comparative lawquot;, quot;leximetricsquot;) in order to answer the questions of whether there has been convergence, divergence or persistence of for shareholder, creditor, and worker protection, and how this development relates to...

This article analyzes how shareholder protection has developed in 20 countries from 1995 to 2005. In contrast to traditional legal research, it draws on a quantitative methodology to law ('leximetrics', 'numerical comparative law'). Some of its results are that in most countries shareholder...

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...

How does the law address topics such as the sale and trade of securities and the regulation of stock exchanges and investment firms? Given the growing importance of capital markets, securities law is highly relevant, but unfortunately also quite complicated. This complexity is also reflected in...

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...