We investigate how company-level corporate governance practices and country-level legal investor protection jointly affect company performance. We find that in any legal regime there are a few specific governance practices that improve performance. Companies with good governance practices operating in stringent legal environments, however, show a valuation discount relative to similar companies operating in flexible legal environments. At the same time, a stronger country-level regime does not reduce the valuation discount of companies with weak governance practices. Our analysis suggests a threshold level of country development above which stringent regulation hurts the performance of well governed companies or has a neutral effect for poorly governed companies.

Exploiting unique, time-varying, bilateral data on bank ownership for many countries, we show that exports tend to be larger when a foreign bank from the importing country is present. Entry of a foreign bank also boosts export growth to the home country of the foreign bank relative to other countries, especially when foreign bank presence in the country is large and bilateral cross-border lending low. We find supportive evidence that foreign banks facilitate trade by reducing financial frictions for firms. Entry spurs exports to the foreign bank's home country especially in sectors more dependent on external finance, and particularly so in countries less economically and financially developed and with a higher share of foreign banks. Imports of external finance dependent sectors also grow more after entry, but less so than exports do. Exit of a foreign bank does not fully eliminate the beneficial effects of prior foreign bank presence on exports.

ABSTRACT The Czech and Slovak Republics' mass privatization scheme used voucher points distributed to the population and a competitive bidding process to change the governance of a large number of firms. Voucher prices and following secondary market prices are shown to depend upon the resulting ownership structures. The more concentrated ownership is, the higher prices are. High absolute ownership by a single domestic investor is associated with even higher voucher prices. I find some evidence that initially prices are relatively lower when a bank‐sponsored investment fund has a relatively large stake in a firm. This suggests conflicts of interest.

Do foreign banks perform better than domestic banks? The existing literature has come up with different answers, in part as data coverage has varied and often been limited. Studying the performance of foreign relative to domestic banks in many countries between 1999 and 2006, we find that the answer importantly depends on a number of factors. Specifically, foreign banks tend to perform better when from a high income country and when regulation in the host country is relatively weak. They also perform better when larger and having a bigger market share. Foreign banks from home countries with the same language and similar regulation as the host country also perform better. Geographical closeness, however, does not improve performance. These findings show that it is important to control for heterogeneity among foreign banks when studying their performance and help reconcile some contradictory results found in the literature.

We document increased stock price comovement for companies added to major indices around the world. Using data on forty developed and emerging markets for 10 years, we find that in most markets, when added to a major index, firms experience an increase in their beta (especially if their pre-inclusion beta is low) and in the extent to which market returns explain firm stock returns (R2). Stock turnover and analyst coverage also typically increase upon inclusion. Various empirical tests suggest that the category/habitat views of Barberis, Shleifer and Wurgler explain most of these results, although information-related factors also account for some findings.

Stijn Claessens, George Pennacchi, Estimating the Likelihood of Mexican Default from the Market Prices of Brady Bonds, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Mar., 1996), pp. 109-126

In countries with more secure property rights, firms might allocate resources better and consequentially grow faster as the returns on different types of assets are more protected against competitors' actions. Using data on sectoral value added for a large number of countries, we find evidence consistent with better property rights leading to higher growth through improved asset allocation. Quantitatively, the growth effect is as large as that of improved access to financing due to greater financial development. Our results are robust using various samples and specifications, including controlling for growth opportunities.