We discuss empirical challenges in multicountry studies of the effects of firm-level corporate governance on firm value, focusing on emerging markets. We assess the severe data, “construct validity”, and endogeneity issues in these studies, propose methods to respond to those issues, and...

A central issue in corporate governance research is the extent to which “good” governance practices are universal (one size mostly fits all) or instead depend on country and firm characteristics. We report evidence that supports the second view. We first conduct a case study of Brazil, in...

We use extensive hand collected surveys reporting governance practices of Brazilian firms in 2004, 2006, and 2009 to build a broad corporate governance index and analyze the evolution of corporate governance in Brazil and the association between governance and firm value. We find that corporate...