We examine the location of trades for stocks cross-listed in the U.S. We consider for the first time in this context the role of the actual rules for trading on exchanges, both across countries and over time, to understand trading patterns. As well, we consider various new measures of sovereign governance and shareholder rights across counties to assess other legal and institutional drivers of trading activity. The data indicate that the proportion of trades that occurs on an exchange monotonically increases with sovereign governance and increases at a decreasing rate with the number of stock exchange trading rules
