Since the 1970s, the relationship between productive property, and the state and individual has been contested in Marxist-Leninist nations. Though China has moved to permit robust private activity, and the private aggregations of capital in corporate form, Cuba has strictly adhered to...

After the financial crisis, there has been considerable debate about the role of corporations in society. It has become broadly accepted that corporations - particularly the world's largest publicly traded corporations – need to be governed with respect for the society and the environment....

Conventional economic analysis assumes that Central Counterparties (CCPs) may help to reduce systemic risk and avoid future financial crises by mandating the central clearing of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives. This view largely goes unchallenged by governments, regulators, practitioners, and...

We empirically analyze the determinants of regulatory costs associated with accounting, audit and tax rules in the European Union. Regulatory costs include transfer payments from losers to beneficiaries of such legislation. Hence, building upon a novel dataset, we estimate regulatory costs as...

Income taxes are a major expense for profitable corporations, oftentimes 25 percent or more of pretax income. This study exploits a setting – the market for corporate control – to test competing agency-based and risk-based explanations of corporate tax planning. Exploiting the staggered...

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), with $8 trillion in assets, are government-owned institutional investors pursuing political and financial investment objectives. I document evidence supporting the hypothesis that simultaneous pursuit of political and financial investment objectives renders SWFs...

We examine the impact of global IFRS adoption on cross-border equity investments by individual investors. Our proxy for cross-border equity investments is trading volume in the Open Market at Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The Open Market is a segment designed for German individual investors to trade...

Today's most pressing constitutional question is posed by a global economic system whose expansive tendencies seem no longer controllable. The current financial/debt crisis has triggered diverse reactions in the political arena ranging from the reformist ordo‐liberal approach followed by...

This paper examines whether and how inside ownership mediates the relation between disclosure quality and the cost of capital. Both ownership and more transparent reporting have the potential to align incentives between managers and investors thereby reducing systematic risk. Employing a large...

The International Financial Reporting Standard for Small and Medium-sized Entities (IFRS for SMEs) is increasingly being adopted in a number of jurisdictions. Despite the economic importance of non-publicly accountable entities, little is known about what factors influence countries' decisions...