The paper examines the effect of international regulatory harmonization on cross-border labor migration. We analyze directives in the European Union (EU) that harmonized accounting and auditing standards. This regulatory harmonization should make it less costly for those who work in the...

This study assesses the impact of exchange rate variability on the riskiness of U.S. multinational firms by examining the relation between exchange rate variability and stock return volatility and by decomposing this relation into components of systematic and diversifiable risk. Focusing on two...

This paper studies the cross-border transactions in equity by investors in Canada, Germany,Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. We find that investors from different countries make very different decisions about the allocation of their portfolio across markets. In contradiction to the notion that high...

This paper describes regularities in the intraday spreads and prices quoted by dealers on the London Stock Exchange. It develops a measure of spread-related transaction costs, one that recognizes dealers' willingness to price trades within their quoted spreads. This measure of transaction costs...

This paper uses transactions data from the London Stock Exchange to characterize the intraday pattern of security prices and trading volume for securities trading on SEAQ. It focuses in more detail on a sample of U.K. firms that are cross-listed on the NYSE. Using additional data from the...

This paper documents the available evidence on international portfolio investment in five GECD countries. We draw three conclusions from the data. First. there is strong evidence of a home bias in national investment portfolios despite the potential gains from international diversification....

The consequences of information differences across investors in capital markets are still much debated. This paper examines the relation between information differences across investors and the cost of capital, and makes three points. First, in models of perfect competition, information...

As domestic sources of outside finance are limited in many countries around the world, it is important to understand the factors that influence whether foreign outside investors provide capital to a country's firms. This study examines whether and why investor concern about corporate governance...

This paper examines the link between disclosure and the cost of capital. We exploit an exogenous cost of capital shock created by the Enron scandal in Fall 2001 and analyze firms' disclosure responses to this shock. These tests are opposite to the typical research design that analyzes cost of...

This paper examines capital market effects of changes in securities regulation. We analyze two key directives in the European Union (EU) that tightened market abuse and transparency regulation and its enforcement. All EU member states were required to adopt these two directives, but did so at...