Mullainathan and Shleifer (2002) argue that there are two types of media bias. One bias, called ideology, reflects a news outlet's desire to affect reader opinions in a particular direction. The second bias, referred to as spin, reflects the outlet's attempt to simply create a memorable story....

This paper analyses whether societal norms help to explain cross-country differences in financial development. We analyze whether societal norms in addition to legal institutions have an impact on financial development. We address the implications of the inclusion of societal norms for the...

We explain the development of stock markets by both legal and societal determinants and analyze the relevance of both determinants in the Levine-Zervos (1998) cross-sectional growth regressions. We argue that the legal indicators as developed by La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer and Vishny...