Conventional wisdom warns that unaccountable political and business agents can enrich a few at the expense of many. This title intends to find statistical evidence and case study illustrations that democratic institutions at various governance levels have facilitated opportunistic gains for...

This paper examines the extent to which firm-specific levels of auditor-independence are codetermined with alternative inputs to governance production. We identify a number of governance-producing mechanisms that are causally or simultaneously related to auditor independence. These results are...

Legislators are calling for a “systemic risk regulator”, in part to provide an early warning of financial conditions that threaten the real economy. To succeed, however, we need a forward-looking measure of systemic risk. Even more, we need a measure that varies with “pollution” from...