This paper belongs to the growing body of the ?Law and finance) literature based on timeseries study. It carries out an empirical investigation of the role of corporate governance in financial development. We focus on French corporate governance reforms in order to examine whether these reforms...

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...

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...

Based on 412 control transactions between 1990 and 2000 we construct a measure of the private benefits of control in 39 countries. We find that the value of control ranges between –4% and +65%, with an average of 14%. As predicted by theory, in countries where private benefits of control are...

The regulations that shape the design and the operations of corporations, credit and securities markets differ vastly from country to country. In addition, similar regulations are often unequally enforced in different countries. Economists still have an imperfect understanding of why these...

The World Bank reports « Doing business » (2004, 2005 and 2006), referring to the main assumptions and findings of the « law and finance » theory, predict that the common law system provides better basis for financial development and economic growth than French origin civil law. This paper...

(VF)Cet article propose d’évaluer les relations entre les réformes en matière de gouvernance d’entreprise et la réorganisation du système financier en France. L’objectif est de discuter la thèse selon laquelle il existe une relation forte et stable entre tradition juridique, niveau...

The development of the financial system is shown, both historically and in contemporary data, to be adversely affected by inequality in the distribution of land. To accommodate these empirical findings, a theory is developed that highlights the incentives of landowners to oppose competition in...

Developing Asia has exhibited rapid growth while saddled with relatively backward financial systems. One might conclude that the coexistence of sustained rapid growth and financial underdevelopment in developing Asia implies that an efficient financial sector is not indispensable for economic...

The banking system of the People's Republic of China (PRC) is now the largest in the world, and its capital markets are rapidly approaching the size of those in the advanced economies. This paper traces the evolution of the PRC's financial system away from a traditional bank-dominated and...