We analyse a recently developed leximetric dataset on Indian labour law over the period 1970 to 2006. Indian labour law is seen to be highly protective of workers’ interests by international standards, particularly in the area of dismissal regulation. We undertake a time-series econometric...

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 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...

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...

Abstract It is argued here that – contrary to current conventional wisdom – an active market for corporate control is not an essential ingredient of either company law reform or financial and economic development. The absence of such a market in coordinated market systems during their modern...

Changes in public policy and corporate strategy have enhanced the role of contracts as mechanisms of economic governance. The understanding that norms, standards and other forms of regulatory mechanism can affect the structure of incentives and the quality of contractual outcomes has helped to...