Section 1 presents tests for the hypothesis that shifts in technology and industry composition might have played a key role in causing the U.S. listing gap. We replicate our core analysis at the industry level and find no evidence that the dynamics of the number of listing is driven by industry...

The Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) in China is unique worldwide in requiring disclosure of the timing, participants and selected content of private in-house meetings between firm managers and outside investors. We investigate whether these private meetings benefit hosting-firms and their major...

Accounting certification in the former Soviet republics lacks credibility. Accountants are not familiar with International Financial Reporting Standards or International Standards on Auditing. Certifications can be bought. Audit opinions can be sold. Financial statements that are auditing by...

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union each of the former Soviet republics has started the process of moving away from central planning and toward a market economy. Part of that process involves private sector institution building. One private sector institution that has generally experienced a...

Passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 followed hard on the collapses of Enron and WorldCom. Waste makes haste. It was legislation drafted in anger. Five years later, and after three official reports, US government agencies and financial market participants worry that the New York may have...

Using a sample of newly initiated American Depository Receipt (ADR) programs over the period 2000 and 2004, this paper examines the effect of Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) on the cross-listing decision and the value consequences of cross-listing by foreign firms. We find that the passage of SOX did...

Non-U.S. firms have two options to converge toward U.S. capital market and legal regulations - to cross-list in the U.S. or to agree to be acquired by a U.S. bidder. We show that companies that have lower growth opportunities, are more capital intensive, and seek bonding benefits through...

As domestic sources of outside finance are limited in many countries around the world, it is important to understand factors that influence whether foreign investors provide capital to a country's firms. We study 4,409 firms from 29 countries to assess whether and why concerns about corporate...

We examine conditional accounting conservatism (Basu, 1997) of UK firms cross-listed in the US. More specifically, we compare the degree of conservatism for UK cross-listed firms that raise equity capital versus conservatism of companies that do not raise equity capital. We expect that equity...

We examine a primary outcome of corporate governance, the ability to identify and terminate poorly performing CEOs, to test the effectiveness of U.S. investor protections in improving the corporate governance of cross-listed firms. We find that firms from weak investor protection regimes that...