We revisit debates on the regulation of IPOs by analyzing failure rates of IPOs carried out between 1900 and 1913 on the London and Berlin stock exchanges, two of the leading financial markets during the early 20th century. IPOs were regulated more heavily in Germany than in Britain and, as...

In Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, Poirot deduced that no single culprit was responsible for a murder on the eponymous train. In this article, which is intended to serve as an aide memoire to assess anticipated reforms, we similarly reason that there is no single suspect...

In the UK, in contrast to most other countries, a hallmark of corporate governance is a separation of ownership and control. There is evidence suggesting that this pattern may have been the norm in Britain as far back as the late 19th century. This paper investigates the extent to which law, in...

“Offensive shareholder activism” involves buying up sizeable stakes in underperforming companies and agitating for changes predicted to increase shareholder returns. Though hedge funds are currently highly publicized practitioners of this corporate governance tactic, there has been no...

An important tenet of a burgeoning 'law and finance' literature is that stock market development is contingent upon corporate law offering ample protection to shareholders. This paper addresses this claim, using as its departure point developments occurring in the United States between 1930 and...