Corporate Governance relates to mechanisms through which providers of resources to the firm get their share of resources in return. Adequate governance practices help develop capital markets and assist market forces in attaining efficient contracts. Convincing evidence exists that well developed...

This paper examines the differences in accrual-based and real earnings management across countries from the perspective of investor protection. Following prior research (Leuz et al., 2003), we hypothesize that accrual-based earnings management is more constrained by strict discipline in...

The paper presents the actual ownership structure of public companies in Bulgaria on the basis of a survey of 104 of the companies traded on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange. It discusses as well the problems of disclosure of ownership information, focusing on the transposition of the EC Large...

This paper studies the impact of regulation on IPO markets using historical data. Regulatory interventions have different effects on the development of public equity markets under different conditions. Studying the whole population of 879 Italian IPOs from the unification of Italy (1861) through...

In this paper, we show that too strong investor protection may harm small firms and, thus, entrepreneurial initiatives. This situation is particularly relevant in crowdinvesting, which refers to a recent financial innovation originating on the Internet. In general, securities regulation offers...

We investigate whether the value impact of family control in Western European firms depends on country-level investor protection. To this aim, we account for ownership–value nonlinearities. Supporting that the risk of expropriation increases with high ownership concentration, we find an...

This study assesses the impact of self-regulation on equity markets by analysing IPO failure rates on the London Stock Exchange during 1900–13. Focussing on differences between Official Quotation (OQ) and Special Settlement (SS) methods of going public, we find that the failure rate of IPOs by...

This paper uses a quasi-experimental framework provided by recent changes in Russian corporate law to study the effect of investor protection on the value of shares. The legal change analyzed involves the empowerment of preferred (non-voting) shareholders to veto unfavorable changes in their...

The process of liberalisation of India's economy since 1991 has brought with it considerable development both of its financial markets and the legal institutions which support these. An influential body of recent economic work asserts that a country's 'legal origin'-as a civilian or common law...

There remains strong support in law and economics for three important Coasian positions: law does not matter; law matters but their institutions adapt to allow efficient private contracts; and finally, while law matters and domestic institutions cannot adapt enough, firms and individuals can...