TY  - JOUR
AU  - Porta,Rafael La
AU  - Lopez-de-Silane,Florencio
AU  - Shleifer,Andrei
AU  - Vishny,Robert W.
TI  - Legal Determinants of External Finance
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 5879
PY  - 1997
Y2  - January 1997
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5879
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5879.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Rafael La Porta
Dartmouth College
Tuck School
210 Tuck Hall
Hanover, NH  03755
Tel: 603/646-3739
E-Mail: rafael.laporta@dartmouth.edu

Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes
EDHEC Business School
393, Promenade des Anglais BP 3116
06202 Nice Cedex 3
FRANCE
Tel: +33 (0) 4 93 18 78 07
Fax: +33 (0) 4 93 18 78 41
E-Mail: Florencio.lopezdesilanes@edhec.edu

Andrei Shleifer
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Littauer Center M-9
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-5046
Fax: 617/496-1708
E-Mail: ashleifer@harvard.edu

Robert W. Vishny
Booth School of Business
The University of Chicago
5807 South Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago, IL  60637
Tel: 773/702-2522
Fax: 773/834-1920
E-Mail: Rvishny@gmail.com
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 1997-06-01
AB  - Using a sample of 49 countries, we show that countries with poorer investor protections, measured by both the character of legal rules and the quality of law enforcement, have smaller and narrower capital markets.  These findings apply to both equity and debt markets.  In particular, French civil law countries have both the weakest investor protections and the least developed capital markets, especially as compared to common law countries.
ER  -