Law Enforcement and Stock Market Development: Evidence from India

Corporate governance reform is a global phenomenon sweeping through the US, Europe, China, Korea, India, Latin America and many other places. These reforms have been accompanied by a surge in corporate governance scholarship focused on emerging markets. This research suggests, although not uniformly, that "better" corporate law and governance tend to be correlated with better stock market development, more dispersed ownership structures, and higher firm profitability, amongst other things. These findings have sparked debate and thought on why these correlations exist and whether there are particular features of corporate law and governance that matter more than others to these economic measures. Indeed, recent research in developed markets has begun to focus on enforcement of corporate and securities laws.