Financial Globalization, Corporate Governance, and Eastern Europe

Abstract

For many countries, the most significant barriers to trade in financial assets have been knocked down. Yet, the financial world is not flat because poor governance prevents firms from being widely held and from taking full advantage of financial globalization. Poor governance has implications for corporate finance as well as for macroeconomics. I show that poor governance in Eastern Europe is accompanied, as expected, by high corporate ownership concentration, low firm valuation, poor financial development, and low foreign participation.