Using supervisory data from U.S. financial institutions on fraud-related losses in foreign markets, we find that losses in countries with poor governance have lower recovery rates. Our results are robust to accounting for potential endogeneity and reverse causality concerns, among numerous robustness checks. The association is driven by intuitive governance dimensions such as control of corruption, rule of law, regulatory quality and government effectiveness. In addition, country governance plays a particularly important role in fraud recovery for firms with poor risk management quality. Overall, this paper presents unique and novel evidence tying country governance quality to firm-level risk realizations

We study the importance of trust in the investment advisory industry by exploiting the geographic dispersion of victims of the Madoff Ponzi scheme. Residents of communities that were exposed to the fraud subsequently withdrew assets from investment advisers and increased deposits at banks. Additionally, exposed advisers were more likely to close. Advisers who provided services that can build trust, such as financial planning advice, experienced fewer withdrawals. Our evidence suggests that the trust shock was transmitted through social networks. Taken together, our results show that trust plays a critical role in the financial intermediation industry. Received April 18, 2016; editorial decision March 8, 2017 by Editor Robin Greenwood

In its 2010 Morrison v. National Australia Bank ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that key fraud-related provisions of U.S. securities laws would apply only to transactions in foreign securities that take place on U.S. exchanges. We document a large increase in the price of U.S. cross-listed foreign stocks relative to their currency-adjusted equivalent home-market shares around the decision, which we associate with the newly differentiated legal status accorded U.S. cross-listed shares. The market’s reaction to the decision affirms that investors value how U.S. securities laws apply an element of the “bonding” hypothesis as a motive for international cross-listings. Received June 7, 2017; editorial decision November 13, 2017 by Editor Paolo Fulghieri