This paper compares the comovement of individual stock returns across emerging markets. Campbell et al. (2001) and Morck et al. (2000) show that the US in the post war period saw rising firm specific stock return variations and thus declining comovement. We detect a similar, albeit weaker,...

China is now the world's largest destination of foreign direct investment (FDI), despite assessments highlighting its institutional deficiencies. But this FDI inflow corresponds closely to predicted FDI flows into China from a model that predicts FDI inflow based on government quality indicators...

Control of corporate assets by wealthy families in economies lacking institutional integrity is common. It has negative implications on corporate governance and adverse macroeconomic effects when it extends across a sufficiently large part of the country's corporate sector. Morck and Yeung...

Firm-specific variation in stock returns and fundamental performance measures is significantly higher in industries that have a history of more investment in information technology (IT). We hypothesise that IT is associated with creative destruction or product differentiation, either of which...

In environments where the legal system and market disciplinary forces are weak to enforce contracts, vertical integration is a means to overcome transaction difficulties. Yet, these weak institution environments are also characterised by high government interventions and even corruption....

Rosenstein-Rodan (1943) and others posit that rapid development requires a 'big push' - the coordinated rapid growth of diverse complementary industries, and suggests a role for government in providing such coordination. We argue that Japan's zaibatsu, or pyramidal business groups, provided this...

Corporate governance disasters could often be averted questioned CEOs, demanded answers, and blown whistles. Work in social psychology, by Milgram and others, suggests humans have an innate predisposition to obey authority. This excessive subservience, here dubbed a quot;type II agency...

What is good for big business need not generally advance a country's overall economy. Big business turnover correlates with rising income, productivity, and (in high income countries) faster capital accumulation; consistent with Schumpeter's (1912) creative destruction and recent formalizations...

A corporation is an artificial person created for an economic purpose, as described in various aspects of the Theory of the Firm. Recent historical and comparative research shows that corporations in most countries come in groups, each controlled by a single principal. This has implications for...

We use a simple real options framework and empirical data to establish that although Japanese banks hold borrowers' shares, their interest is more aligned as a contractual claimant than a residual claimant of corporations. We then explain why the Japanese model of corporate governance was useful...