In this survey article, we summarize the evidence from the extant literature on how sovereign laws and their enforcement impact outside investor protection, and the development of capital markets and individual firms. The body of evidence indicates the legal protections conferred on outside...

We examine the interaction of dividends, agency costs and taxes on SEO valuations using the 2003 dividend tax cut as a natural experiment. We find the difference in SEO announcement-day returns between dividend- and non-dividend-paying firms disappears after the tax cut evidencing dividend...

We examine corporate purchases of Directors and Officers (D&O) liability insurance and find that in addition to governance quality it contains managers’ private information. In particular, we find that insider control in excess of insider share holdings is jointly associated with lower D&O...