We present data on ownership structures of large corporations in 27 wealthy economies, making an effort to identify ultimate controlling shareholders of these firms. We find that, except in economies with very good shareholder ...

Djankov et al. (2003a) propose and measure for 109 countries in the year 2000 an index of formalism of legal procedure for two simple disputes: eviction of a non-paying tenant and collection of a bounced check. For a ...

In the last decade, economists have produced a considerable body of research suggesting that the historical origin of a country’s laws is highly correlated with a broad range of its legal rules and regulations, as well ...

We use a newly assembled sample of 1,503 regions from 82 countries to compare the speed of per capita income convergence within and across countries. Regional growth is shaped by similar factors as national growth, such ...

Recent research has documented large differences among countries in ownership concentration in publicly traded firms, in the breadth and depth of capital markets, in dividend policies, and in the access of firms to external ...

We present a new measure of legal protection of minority shareholders against expropriation by corporate insiders: the anti-self-dealing index. Assembled with the help of Lex Mundi law firms, the index is calculated for ...

Using a sample of 49 countries, we show that countries with poorer investor protections, measured by both the character of legal rules and the quality of law enforcement, have smaller and narrower capital markets. These ...

In recent years, comparative economics experienced a revival, with a new focus on comparing capitalist economies. The transition from socialism, the Asian financial crisis, and the European economic and political integration, ...

Several authors suggest that trust is an important determinant of cooperation between strangers in a society, and therefore of performance of social institutions. We argue that trust should be particularly important for ...

In developing countries, informal firms account for up to about half of all economic activity. Using data from World Bank firm-level surveys, we find that informal firms are small and extremely unproductive compared with ...