In recent years there have been two parallel discussions taking place in the US and in the UK about the role which institutional shareholders should play in governing the corporation. In the US this discussion is around the idea of shareholder empowerment, in the UK it is around shareholder...

An important issue in evaluating corporate governance is how to measure it. In prior work on emerging markets, we have advocated measuring firm-level governance using country-specific indices, tailored to each country's laws and institutions. An alternate approach, used in commercial indices, is...

In the United States, the representation of women on corporate boards of directors has been flat for 6 years now. By contrast, elsewhere around the world the topic is a hot button issue. This includes Australia where the proportion of board seats held by women has suddenly jumped from 8% in 2010...

Since my books on the role of women appeared, in 2007 and in 2010, the participation by women in corporate governance has become a front page issue in many European nations, including Norway, Spain, and France, which have adopted quota laws, and in Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy, which may...

A fundamental shift in how privacy and confidentiality are treated has emerged within many organizations. As a result, privacy and confidentiality pose many risks to an organization. Yet they are rarely viewed from a risk-based perspective. This paper examines the impact of privacy and...

This paper, a chapter in the forthcoming Research Handbook on the Economics of Corporate law, describes the leading research related to credit ratings, and assesses regulatory proposals related to ratings, including those in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. It explains how rating agencies have...

It was everyone's worst nightmare; the spectre of systemic collapse. And this time, everyone was in it together. The complexity of modern financial instruments was one obvious culprit. Centuries old legal principles, such as the notion of "insurable interest", were also cast aside; old fashioned...

Loan tranching allows banks to manage risk and facilitate firm financing, which may be essential for firms that cannot access investors from stock markets. We analyze the determinants and benefits of loan tranching by pooling the tranches of individual loans to create the largest cross-country...

This contribution deals with the conflict-of-laws principles governing Financial Instruments, Bonds & Loans, Cheques, Bills of Exchange and Guarantees. It starts with comparative and historic aspects and then goes on to deal with issues regarding the determination of the applicable law. The...