The Law and Economics of Self-Dealing

What is it really like being a minority shareholder? A new index:

The Law and Economics of Self-Dealing: Simeon Djankov, Rafael LaPorta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer: NBER Working Paper No. 11883: Issued in December 2005: We present a new measure of legal protection of minority shareholders against expropriation by corporate insiders: the anti-self-dealing index. Assembled with the help of Lex Mundi law firms, the index is calculated for 72 countries based on legal rules prevailing in 2003, and focuses on private enforcement mechanisms, such as disclosure, approval, and litigation, governing a specific self-dealing transaction. This theoretically-grounded index predicts a variety of stock market outcomes, and generally works better than the commonly used index of anti-director rights.