Common stochastic trends among major international stock price indices has been a very intensively analyzed issue mainly as a result of the 1987 stock market crash and the need for policy coordination in financial markets. This paper investigates the existence of common stochastic trends among...

This study examines the impact of creditor rights on cash holdings using a sample of firms from 48 countries. We argue that creditor rights affect the willingness of lenders to provide credit, which in turn affects the need for internal liquidity and cash holdings. Consistent with this, we find...

Based on a review of international and regional responses to the global financial and economic crisis and its implications for finance in Asia, Douglas Arner and Lotte Schou-Zibell draw lessons for Asian financial systems with regard to the scope of regulation; financial standards; supervision,...

This paper provides new international evidence on the relationship between dividend policy and insider ownership by analysing a sample of firms from countries characterised by an Anglo-Saxon tradition and a matching sample of companies from countries with Civil Law legal systems. We hypothesize...

Though overall bank performance from July 2007 to December 2008 was the worst since at least the Great Depression, there is significant variation in the cross-section of stock returns of large banks across the world during that period. We use this variation to evaluate the importance of factors...

We show that 70% of Chinese listed companies are ultimately controlled by government agencies, thereby indicating that state ownership remains widespread in China's stock markets. Three questions are considered that are related to government control structures and their impact on firm value: (1)...

This paper shows that there is a close relation between corporate governance and the portfolios held by investors. Most firms in countries with poor investor protection are controlled by large shareholders, so that only a fraction of the shares issued by firms in these countries can be freely...

The role of government shareholding in corporate performance is central to an understanding of China’s newly privatized large firms and the stock market. In this paper, we analyse shareholders as agents that can both harm and benefit companies. We examine the ownership structure of 826 listed...

This paper investigates the strategy of private equity investors to take public companiesprivate in blockholder-based economies. Drawing on a unique dataset, we providestrong evidence that private equity investors buy companies in order to mitigatepotential agency problems and hence to improve...

We study the impact of political institutions on foreign firms’ choice of their U.S. cross-listing venue. Using two measures of the quality of political institutions (the political rights index and the political constraint index) and controlling for various firm-level and country-level...