“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 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...

Previous research often emphasised the similarity of shareholder protection in common law (or English legal origin) countries. Conversely, this article found a remarkable diversity of shareholder protection in common law countries. Using our new shareholder protection index with 60 variables, we...

Since the beginning of the new century harmonisation of company law has once again been on the European agenda. One of its most important aims is the protection of shareholders. This article addresses this aim from a leximetric perspective. At the outset, it will be explained what leximetrics is...

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...

Soon we can expect a new type of company: the European Private Company (Societas Privata Europaea – SPE) aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises in the EU. In this article, we analyse how creditors of future SPEs will be protected. In the first part, we identify on a general level how...

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

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 quanti-tative methodology to law ("leximetrics", "numerical comparative law"). Some of its results are that in most countries shareholder...

In this paper we build a new and meaningful shareholder protection index for five countries and code the development of the law for over three decades. At-tributing and comparing legal differences by numbers is contrary to the tradi-tional way of doing comparative law and the use of a...

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 report the...