This paper analyses a longitudinal dataset on legal protection of shareholders over a 36 year period, 1970-2005, for four advanced countries, the UK, France, Germany and the USA. It examines two aspects of the legal origin hypothesis-whether shareholder protection is higher in the common law...

Do shareholder protection laws affect the corporate cost of capital? To identify the causal impact of shareholder protection laws on firms’ implied cost of capital, we exploit the staggered adoption across 23 U.S. states of universal demand (UD) laws, which place significant obstacles to...

This paper uses a quasi-experimental framework provided by recent changes in Russian corporate law to study the effect of investor protection on the value of shares. The legal change analyzed involves the empowerment of preferred (non-voting) shareholders to veto unfavorable changes in their...

This paper uses a quasi-experimental framework provided by recent changes in Russian corporate law to study the effect of investor protection on the value of shares. The legal change analyzed involves the empowerment of preferred (non-voting) shareholders to veto unfavorable changes in their...

We identify two opposing effects of issuing equity with tag-along rights that secure an equal price in the event of a takeover. First, the anti-self dealing effect commits controlling owners to sell only to new owners that increase shareholder value. Second, the rent transfer effect shifts rents...

We examine whether institutional investors affect corporate governance by analyzing portfolio holdings of institutions in companies from 23 countries during the period 2003-2008. We find that firm-level governance is positively associated with international institutional investment. Changes in...

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of corporate internationalization, governance structures, and legal protections on the foreign earnings response coefficient (FERC). The FERC is a measure of the value-relevance of foreign earnings. We collected data on 3653 Taiwanese firms...

Recent studies have debated the impact of investor protection law on corporate behavior and value. I exploit the staggered passage of state securities fraud statutes (“blue sky laws”) in the United States to estimate the causal effects of investor protection law on firm financing decisions...

This paper provides comprehensive, detailed documentation of major corporate governance reforms (CGRs) undertaken by 26 advanced and emerging economies. Have these reforms impacted corporate investment decisions by altering investor protection (IP)? To answer this question, we estimate the CGRs'...

As attention moves rapidly towards comparative approaches, the research and teaching of company law has somehow lagged behind. The overall purpose of this book is therefore to fill a gap in the literature by identifying whether conceptual differences between countries exist. Rather than...