Most listed firms are freestanding in the U.S, while listed firms in other countries often belong to business groups: lasting structures in which listed firms control other listed firms. Hand-collected historical data illuminate how the present ownership structure of the United States arose: (1)...

We compare sources of funds and investment activities of venture capital (VC) funds in Germany, Israel, Japan and the UK using a newly constructed data set. The data provide a rare opportunity to evaluate relations between funds' sources of finance and activities. We find that sources of VC...

Financial frictions have been identified as key factors affecting economic fluctuations and growth. But, can institutional reforms reduce financial frictions? Based on a canonical investment model, we consider two potential channels: (i) financial transaction costs at the firm level; and (ii)...

Using newly-constructed data covering the last decade, we document that, in most of forty markets, when added to the main index, firms’ returns experience an increase in comovement with the rest of the index, reflected in higher beta and greater explanatory power of the market return. Stock...

This paper analyzes yield spreads on sovereign debt issued by emerging markets using modern data from the 1990s and newly-collected historical data on debt traded in London during 1870–1913, a previous “golden era” for international capital market integration. Applying several empirical...