Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Political Science, December 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 270-280).

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2003. / Also available in print.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2003.

Short selling came onto the centre stage during the recent financial crisis when the collapse in price of financial listed securities after the demise of Lehman Brothers led to the introduction of a number of temporary short selling bans. In Europe however it was the commencement of the recent European sovereign debt crisis that was the true stimulus for proposing new short selling rules, the culmination of which was the introduction of the European Short Selling Regulation (the 'Regulation'). The thesis asks whether the Regulation is a justifiable response to the concerns posed by short selling. Such issues are measured against the relevant economic literature that almost overwhelmingly demonstrates that short selling contributes to market efficiency, that restrictions generally make markets less efficient and that constraints do not achieve the desired objective of stabilising prices. The thesis then analyses the political economy and backdrop to the Regulation’s introduction that largely dictated the shape of the final rules. The precise legislative choices made by Europe, including with respect to sovereign credit default swaps, are analysed, and (where relevant) there is a comparative element with a consideration of the US short sale regulations. These rules are used as a contrast and as a means of commenting more effectively on the European provisions. The doctorate concludes that the Regulation is not a justifiable response to policymakers' concerns and that the rules have suffered from the politicisation of the legislative process. The thesis suggests that short-term political point scoring has triumphed over the long-term benefits of market efficiency and that short sellers are now the subjects of highly technical rules that will negatively impair on market efficiency. Although, with time, parties may learn to use the new rules to their advantage, this does not justify the introduction of unreasonable rules in the first place.

We introduce the topic of this Special Issue on the "Role of Financial and Legal Institutions in International Governance", with a particular emphasis on a notion of "international mobility of corporate governance". Our discussion places the Special Issue at the intersection of law, finance, and international business, with a focus on the contexts of foreign investors and directors. Country-level legal and regulatory institutions facilitate foreign ownership, foreign directors, raising external financial capital, and international M&A activity. The interplay between the impact of foreign ownership and foreign directors on firm governance and performance depends on international differences in formal/regulatory institutions. In addition to legal conditions, informal institutions such as political connections also shape the economic value of foreign ownership and foreign directors. We highlight key papers in the literature, provide an overview of the new papers in this Special Issue, and offer suggestions for future research.

This purpose of this study was to develop evidence of a relationship between law libraries and private law firm profitability for law library administrators to use when making strategic decisions that influence the value of their libraries. The highest ranked administrator at each private law firm listed on the 2008 Am Law 200 was invited to complete an online benchmarking survey. The adjusted sample population totaled 179 firms. Fifty-one valid surveys were completed for a 28.5% response rate. Descriptive and statistical analyses were conducted using 26 independent variables (law library characteristics) and a single dependent variable, Revenue per Equity Partner, developed from data published for the Am Law 200. The most significant contributions of this study are: development of important law library financial and return on investment benchmarks; a listing of characteristics that have been empirically shown to impact law firm productivity; identification of optimum reporting structure for the law library administrator. Six characteristics positively impact Revenue per Equity Partner: to whom the library Administrator reports, number of library staff per library, number of Library staff per library, range in hourly bill rate for library staff time, practice areas most often supported. Two monetary measures were also established. The cost benefit of an Am Law library to its firm is $1.00 : $1.68. Each Am Law Library staff member is worth $295,000 in Revenue per Equity Partner to a firm. Law library practitioners can use the results to support evidenced-based strategic decision making in the administration of any private law firm library. Faculty and students in law librarianship programs will have a greater understanding of how to manage law libraries and collections to provide maximum value to their law firms. Benefits to library and information science research include validation of the research design and benchmarking as a theoretical framework for conducting research into ways libraries can deliver value and return on investment to their sponsors. This research design can be generalized and replicated in future studies. It demonstrates how rank can be used to operationalize relative measures of value for research purposes. Findings from future studies in both for-profit and non-profit settings using appropriate measures of rank may form the basis for development of a theory concerning the relationship between a library and their sponsor's success.

This thesis explores three important topics spanning international asset pricing, empirical capital structure, U.S. politics, and corporate law: relationship-specific investment (RSI), contracting environment and financial performance; RSI, contracting environment and the choice of capital structure; and political value and SEC enforcement actions. Firms that engage in long-term bilateral relationships with their buyers or suppliers are usually required to make relationship-specific investments. We examine how the values of these long-term specific investments are affected by the quality of governmental contract enforcement. We find that firms in relationship-specific industries have higher valuations, measured by Tobin’s Q, when their countries of origin are able to strongly enforce contractual agreements. Our finding is robust to a variety of empirical specifications and regression methods. We also show that as legal quality improves, firms with relationship-specific investments exhibit lower operating performance, presumably due to risk or in order to motivate further investments from their stakeholders. Further analysis of the cross-section of stock returns supports a risk-based explanation. Firms in long-term bilateral relationships with their customers or suppliers are required to make relationship-specific investments in the form of physical equipment, human resources, specific production sites, or brand names. These dedicated assets are usually tied to a particular use or relationship and cannot be redeployed if the firm is liquidated. In the absence of legal enforcement, firms are required to limit their use of debt financing and, consequently, signal a reduced default risk to encourage investment by their contracting parties. Using a sample of 143,278 firm-year observations, and measures of industry-level relationship-specificity and the quality of legal enforcement across 57 countries, we find strong evidence that good quality contract enforcement mitigates the negative association between relationship-specificity and debt financing. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) plays a central role in investigating potential violations of securities laws and initiating enforcement actions in the United States. We examine the association between political culture and political connections and the penalties imposed at the end of SEC enforcement actions. Our analysis is based on two key ideas. First, the political culture of a firm indicates its ethical boundaries and explains the propensity of misconduct across different domains, such as securities laws. Second, political connections signal a firm’s willingness to challenge SEC’s enforcement decisions. We find that the individual defendants associated with Republican firms are less likely to receive a bar or suspension penalty. This finding supports the notion that Republican managers are less likely to commit securities fraud since the Republican ideology stresses market discipline. Moreover, in line with prior research, our results show that political connections and firm size, as a proxy for bargaining power, also reduce penalties imposed in SEC enforcement actions. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

O crédito bancário é a principal fonte de financiamento de pessoas físicas e jurídicas no Brasil. Ainda assim, comparações internacionais apontam que o mercado de crédito no Brasil é pequeno em volume de empréstimos concedidos, limitado em número de instrumentos e caro nos preços praticados. O propósito desta tese é apreender as expectativas em relação ao direito supostas em documentos oficiais do Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) que sugeriram, entre 1999 e 2006, medidas para a reversão desse quadro. Para tanto, analisa os argumentos apresentados para a implementação de um conjunto específico de medidas de reforma jurídica dos sistemas de insolvência e de cobrança de dívidas, considerados cruciais para o desenvolvimento financeiro. Como resultado da análise, foi possível identificar um continuum discursivo entre as justificativas apresentadas pelos documentos oficiais do BCB para a adoção das medidas de reforma do mercado de crédito e o que se designou de perspectiva da dotação institucional. Segundo essa visão, a clara definição de direitos de propriedade e eficientes mecanismos para o cumprimento de contratos são precondições essenciais para o crescimento econômico. / Bank loans are the main source of financing for individuals and corporations in Brazil. Nevertheless, when compared to those of other countries, the credit market in Brazil is still small in the overall amount of loans, limited in the number of loan instruments and expensive for borrowers. The present dissertation aims at identifying the role assigned to Law by official Brazilian Central Bank (BCB) documents tackling this problem issued between 1999 and 2006. In order to do so, it analyses the arguments used to justify a set of specific measures intending to reform the legal framework for dealing with two key elements for the development of the credit market: default and forfeiture. It is argued that there is a discursive continuum between the arguments present in the official BCB documents aimed at the reform of the credit market and the tenets of what is called institutional endowment. According to these tenets, the clear definition of property rights and efficient means for contract enforcement are pre-conditions for economic development.

O crédito bancário é a principal fonte de financiamento de pessoas físicas e jurídicas no Brasil. Ainda assim, comparações internacionais apontam que o mercado de crédito no Brasil é pequeno em volume de empréstimos concedidos, limitado em número de instrumentos e caro nos preços praticados. O propósito desta tese é apreender as expectativas em relação ao direito supostas em documentos oficiais do Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) que sugeriram, entre 1999 e 2006, medidas para a reversão desse quadro. Para tanto, analisa os argumentos apresentados para a implementação de um conjunto específico de medidas de reforma jurídica dos sistemas de insolvência e de cobrança de dívidas, considerados cruciais para o desenvolvimento financeiro. Como resultado da análise, foi possível identificar um continuum discursivo entre as justificativas apresentadas pelos documentos oficiais do BCB para a adoção das medidas de reforma do mercado de crédito e o que se designou de perspectiva da dotação institucional. Segundo essa visão, a clara definição de direitos de propriedade e eficientes mecanismos para o cumprimento de contratos são precondições essenciais para o crescimento econômico. / Bank loans are the main source of financing for individuals and corporations in Brazil. Nevertheless, when compared to those of other countries, the credit market in Brazil is still small in the overall amount of loans, limited in the number of loan instruments and expensive for borrowers. The present dissertation aims at identifying the role assigned to Law by official Brazilian Central Bank (BCB) documents tackling this problem issued between 1999 and 2006. In order to do so, it analyses the arguments used to justify a set of specific measures intending to reform the legal framework for dealing with two key elements for the development of the credit market: default and forfeiture. It is argued that there is a discursive continuum between the arguments present in the official BCB documents aimed at the reform of the credit market and the tenets of what is called institutional endowment. According to these tenets, the clear definition of property rights and efficient means for contract enforcement are pre-conditions for economic development.