Corporate governance has become a hot topic following accounting scandals at Enron, WorldCom and others, which led to colossal corporate collapses. In many of those cases, the boards were 'asleep at the wheel,' failing to catch managements' questionable accounting practices. The Sarbanes-Oxley...

Online trading platforms and internet communities facilitate access to financial markets and let investors reduce transaction and coordination costs. In this way: (1) they permit many people to be directed towards a single goal, but, at the same time, (2) they allow operations aimed at...

Discussions of corporate governance often focus solely on the attractiveness of firms to investors, but it is also true that firms seek out preferred investors. What, then, are the characteristics of an attractive investor? With nearly $6 trillion in assets, sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) are...

The issue of appropriate corporate governance framework has been a focal point of recent reforms in many countries. This study provides a comprehensive comparative analysis of corporate governance regulatory systems and their evolution over the last 15 years in 30 European countries and the US....

This article examines the decades-long decline of investor protections enshrined in the Securities Act of 1933, most notably Section 11, which imposes near strict liability on corporate insiders and certain secondary actors, primarily underwriters. The provision, the most potent in the federal...

This paper presents a positive model which shows that institutional setups on capital and labor markets might be intertwined by politicoeconomic forces. Two politicoeconomic equilibria arise from our model, one with little protection of insiders on capital and labor markets, and another one with...

We present evidence on the way personal and institutional factors could together guide public company directors in decision-making concerning shareholders and stakeholders. In a sample comprising more than nine hundred directors originating from over fifty countries and serving in firms from...

On November 14th, 2014, SUERF – The European Money and Finance Forum – and CNMV, Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores – the Spanish Authority for supervision of securities markets – jointly organized a conference in Madrid: Challenges in Securities Markets Regulation: Investor...

Since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted in U.S., there has been a general tendency to globally harmonize regulations and practices of board governance. The purpose of this study is to compare among countries how well the board of directors constrains earnings management. Using a sample of firms...

This paper investigates how political and legal institutions affect the governance role of auditors for a sample of firms originating in 42 countries. Prior studies focus on investor protection, but I focus on political rights as well. Specifically, I investigate how institutions and audit...