Although during the last decades the importance of stock markets has increased in all OECD countries, the cross-country differences appear to be remarkably stable. In this paper we relate the factors determining cross-country differences in stock market activity to deeply rooted norms and values...

In his article ‘Institutions and Economic Development: Theory, Policy and History’, Ha-Joon Chang rightly argues that historical evidence does not irrefutably suggest that countries characterized by free markets perform better than those in which the state plays a much more prominent role....

We use Bulgarian firm-level data to investigate the impact of liquidity constraints on investment performance. Internal funds are an important determinant of investment in most industrialized countries. We test whether internal funds are important for firm investment during the current...

In this paper, we propose an empirical model based on the heterogeneous agents literature. Price changes are induced by fundamental, technical, and international factors. The model is estimated for Hong Kong and Thailand surrounding the Asian crisis. We find that the three sources are relevant...