This paper discusses whether the forthcoming reform of market abuse law, as proposed by the EU Commission in October 2011, may be seen as a ‘revolution' or a mere ‘evolution'. Section 1 explains the topicality of regulating market abuse (ie insider dealing and market manipulation), both in...

This paper analyses the impact of the EU market abuse law on share repurchases. We find that the Member States' previous rules differed considerably, and therefore it can be said that the Regulation on share repurchases has provided uniformity as to the availability of a safe harbor for share...

“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...

The global financial crisis of 2008 has stimulated the debate on corporate governance and shareholder protection. The intuitive reason for the topicality of shareholder protection is that insolvencies mainly harm shareholders as the companies' residual claimants. In addition, ideally,...

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...

The legal origins hypothesis is one of the most important and influential ideas to emerge in the social sciences in the past decade. However, the empirical base of the legal origins claim has always been contestable, as it largely consists of cross-sectional datasets which provide evidence on...

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...

Research in law, political science and economics has taken a strong interest in the way companies strategically incorporate in foreign jurisdictions. However, the empirical research about corporate mobility in the EU has so far been limited in two respects: it has focussed on the analysis of...