An important tenet of a burgeoning 'law and finance' literature is that stock market development is contingent upon corporate law offering ample protection to shareholders. This paper addresses this claim, using as its departure point developments occurring in the United States between 1930 and...

The corporate governance arrangements of publicly traded companies have been transformed over the past four decades. Various observers have suggested that Delaware, where more than half of U.S. public companies are incorporated, has done much to influence corporate governance changes. This...

The "law matters" thesis implies countries will not develop a robust stock market or diffuse corporate ownership structures unless laws are in place that curtail the extraction of private benefits of control by large shareholders and address information asymmetries from which outside investors...