Publisher's Synopsis
The first article of the special issue Convergence to shareholder primacy corporate-governance: Evidences from a leximetric analysis of evolution of corporate-governance regulations in 21 countries, 1995-2014 provides the foundation for this issue by analysing panel data on the evolution of corporate governance across 19 developing and 2 developed countries. The next article, entitled Transplantation of Anglo-American corporate governance and its impact on financial market growth: A comparative analysis of nineteen developing countries 1995-2014 is a companion to, and follows on from, the first article. Three of those articles explore the changes to the corporate governance regimes of Kazakhstan, India and China and their impact on financial market growth. Changes in Corporate Governance in Kazakhstan and its impact on financial market growth: An empirical analysis (1991-2017) finds that transposing shareholder primacy regulations to the Kazakhstani corporate governance system has not yet stimulated high foreign investment flows and financial market growth. Similarly, Evolution of corporate governance in India and its impact on the growth of the financial market: An empirical analysis (1995-2014) finds that change in corporate governance in the direction of shareholder primacy has had little effect on financial market growth in India. Moreover, it highlights the gap between law in the books and law in action. Finally, Does law matter? Changes in corporate governance in China and its impact on financial market growth: An empirical analysis (1995-2014) finds that the changes in corporate regulation during the period have in fact made no statistically significant contribution to China's rapid financial market growth in recent years. The next three articles focus on the evolution of corporate governance in three developed economies - UK, Japan and Germany - and in particular on their rate of adoption of shareholder primacy norms. All three articles conclude that the corporate governance regimes in their countries are quite stable; there have been no major changes in the direction of shareholder primacy, nor have their comparative rankings in terms of how far they prioritise shareholder interests changed in the last two decades. After the macro country-based analyses, the contributions to this special issue then focus on the firm-level impact of corporate governance. A theoretical and econometric evaluation of Corporate Governance and Capital Structure in JSE listed companies examines 713 annual reports in an unbalanced panel of 130 Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed companies from 2011 to 2016 and finds that corporate governance practices and firm-specific variables such as profitability, firm size and firm age have a significant influence on the capital structure decisions of JSE-listed firms. The penultimate article, entitled Corporate governance and payout policy: Evidence from India focuses on the impact of corporate governance on dividend policy in Indian companies. It examines the extent to which board independence has a moderating effect on dividend payouts within both widely-held and family-controlled companies. The final article of the special issue, entitled Country-level corporate governance and foreign direct investment in Africa looks at the impact of corporate governance on foreign direct investment across 40 countries in Africa between 2009 and 2015.
