The essence of the legal origin hypothesis is that a country with an English legal origin provides better investor and creditor protection and experiences greater financial development; financial institutions and stock markets flourish, the general public participate more in financing investment...

Contrary to the classical proposition, the works of Prebisch and Singer launched the controversial hypothesis of long-term decline in the terms of trade of primary products vis-à-vis manufactures and a corresponding decline in the terms of trade of the South vis-à-vis the North. The present...

This study observed rapidly rising shares of manufactured and electronic goods in Korea’s total exports and a trend decline in Korea’s terms of trade over the period of this study (1967-2001), in accordance with the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis. Contrary to the expectation of...

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...

Using longitudinal data on labour law in France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States over the period 1970–2010, the authors estimate the impact of labour regulation on unemployment and the labour share of national income. Their dynamic panel data analysis...