International financial integration through equity markets : which firms from which countries go global ?

The authors study international financial integration analyzing firms from various countries raising capital, trading equity, and cross-listing in major world stock markets. Using a large sample of 39,517 firms from 111 countries covering the period 1989-2000, they find that, although international financial integration increases substantially over this period, only relatively few countries and firms actively participate in international markets. Firms more likely to internationalize are from larger and more open economies, with higher income, better macroeconomic policies, and worse institutional environments. These firms tend to be larger, grow faster, and have higher returns and more foreign sales. While changes occur with internationalization, these firm attributes are present before internationalization takes place. The results suggest that international financial integration will likely remain constrained by country and firm characteristics.Microfinance,Small Scale Enterprise,Economic Theory&Research,Markets and Market Access,Investment and Investment Climate

Landsliding and its multiscale influence on mountainscapes

Landsliding is a complex process that modifies mountainscapes worldwide. Its severe and sometimes long-lasting negative effects contrast with the less-documented positive effects on ecosystems, raising numerous questions about the dual role of landsliding, the feedbacks between biotic and geomorphic processes, and, ultimately, the ecological and evolutionary responses of organisms. We present a conceptual model in which feedbacks between biotic and geomorphic processes, landslides, and ecosystem attributes are hypothesized to drive the dynamics of mountain ecosystems at multiple scales. This model is used to integrate and synthesize a rich, but fragmented, body of literature generated in different disciplines, and to highlight the need for profitable collaborations between biologists and geoscientists. Such efforts should help identify attributes that contribute to the resilience of mountain ecosystems, and also should help in conservation, restoration, and hazard assessment. Given the sensitivity of mountains to land-use and global climate change, these endeavors are both relevant and timel

The Future of Stock Exchanges in Emerging Economies: Evolution and Prosepcts

We study the determinants of stock market development and the growing migration of capital raising, listing, and trading activity to international exchanges. Economies with better fundamentals have larger and more liquid markets. As fundamentals improve, however, the degree of migration to international exchanges also increases. This leads to gains for corporations in the form of lower costs and more liquidly-traded shares. Fully-fledged local stock exchanges are thus becoming less necessary for many economies. Furthermore, migration can leave too little domestic activity to sustain a local exchange. Therefore, the functions and forms of stock exchanges in many economies need rethinking.stock exchange development; internationalization of financial markets; trading migration; emerging economies; cross-listing; ADRs; GDRs

Explaining the migration of stocks from exchanges in emerging economies to international centers

The authors study the determinants of the growing migration of stock market activity to international financial centers. They use a sample of 77 countries and document that higher economic growth and more macroeconomic stability help stock market development. Countries with higher income per capita, sounder macroeconomic policies, more efficient legal systems, better shareholder protection, and more open financial markets tend to have larger and more liquid stock markets. The authors show that these factors also drive the degree with which capital raising, listing, and trading have been migrating to international financial centers. As fundamentals improve and technology advances, this migration will likely increase and domestic stock market activity may become too little to support local markets. For many emerging economies, the best policy is to establish sound fundamentals but not necessarily the trading, or even listing of securities locally.Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Markets and Market Access,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Markets and Market Access,Access to Markets