Legal origins theory suggests that law reform,strengthening shareholder and creditor rights, should enhance financial development. We use recently created datasets measuring legal change over time in a sample of 25 developing, developed and transition countries to test this claim. We find that...

We use recently created longitudinal datasets measuring legal change over time to test whether the strengthening of shareholder and creditor rights leads to greater financial development. The hypothesis that law matters to financial development is rejected, both for a sample of 5 countries...

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

We test the ‘law matters’ and ‘legal origin’claims using a newly created panel dataset measuring legal change over time in a sample of developed and developing countries. Our dataset improves on previous ones by avoiding country-specific variables in favour of functional and generic...

A major purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of poor governance or ‘state fragility’ in African countries on their overall economic and agrarian performance. The results of our econometric analysis show that a higher level of public security is conducive to lower levels of...

A major purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of poor governance or ‘state fragility’ in African countries on their overall economic and agrarian performance. The results of our econometric analysis show that a higher level of public security is conducive to lower levels of...

Trade Liberalisation in developing countries over the last 20 years has often been implemented considering it as a pre-requisite to growth. This paper uses ARDL approach to cointegration and examines the relationships between growth and trade liberalisation in the context of India and Korea....

Our panel data analysis (1988-2002) of a sample of 31 less developed countries (LDCs) shows that the stock market capitalization as a percentage of GDP- an important indicator of stock market development- has no relationship with the growth rates of gross fixed capital formation (GGKF). Our time...

This study examines whether there exists a long-term relationship between Indian share price movements and growth through capital accumulation over more than half a century period since 1951. Using the Autoregressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration developed by Pesaran and...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze some leximetric data for a number of developed and less developed countries hitherto unavailable to examine (i) the changing state of shareholder protection and (ii) its connection with stock market development and capital accumulation. It finds a strong...