Many researchers have shown that differences in legal origin explain differences in financial development. Using historical comparisons and cross-country regressions for 30 countries observed for the period from 2005 to 2010, this study tried to assess if different legal origins impacted on the...

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This paper analyzes how differences in legal origin, judicial efficiency, and investor protection affect firm leverage and earnings volatility across developing countries. Using a large number of developing countries, four main findings are highlighted. First, firms in civil legal origin...

The issue of foreign aid dependency in African countries remains controversial among policy makers. So far, there is no consensus on aid effectiveness and the resulting policy prescriptions have been conflicting. The Euro zone which provides the bulk of foreign aid to developing countries, is...

In this paper we use novel historical data on economics and social rights from the constitutions of 201 countries and an instrument variable strategy to answer two important questions. First, do economic and social rights provisions in constitutions reduce poverty? Second, does the strength of...

Crisis is hitting most severely the financial markets of common-law countries (like US and UK) than the markets of civil-law countries (like Italy and other countries in continental Europe). We argue that one reason of the deepening turmoil in the civil law countries is the supremacy in these...