This publication is intended to provide you with accurate and authoritative information concerning the subject matter covered. However, this publication is not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. If you require a legal or other expert advice, you should seek the services of a competent attorney or other professional.

This publication is intended to provide you with accurate and authoritative information concerning the subject matter covered. However, this publication is not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. If you require a legal or other expert advice, you should seek the services of a competent attorney or other professional.

Recent high-profile corporate scandals—such as those involving Enron in the United States, Yukos in Russia, and Livedoor in Japan—demonstrate challenges to legal regulation of business practices in capitalist economies. Setting forth a new analytic framework for understanding these problems, Law and Capitalism examines such contemporary corporate governance crises in six countries, to shed light on the interaction of legal systems and economic change. This provocative book debunks the simplistic view of law’s instrumental function for financial market development and economic growth. Using comparative case studies that address the United States, China, Germany, Japan, Korea, and Russia, Curtis J. Milhaupt and Katharina Pistor argue that a disparate blend of legal and nonlegal mechanisms have supported economic growth around the world. Their groundbreaking findings show that law and markets evolve together in a “rolling relationship,” and legal systems, including those of the most successful economies, therefore differ significantly in their organizational characteristics. Innovative and insightful, Law and Capitalism will change the way lawyers, economists, policy makers, and business leaders think about legal regulation in an increasingly global market for capital and corporate governance.

In this, the first of three volumes to be published by the CEU Press on corporate governance in Central Europe and Russia, distinguished economists, legal scholars, political scientists and sociologists examine the emerging institutions of corporate governance in privatized firms in transition economies. They investigate the role of banks, investment funds, and pension funds, as well as the role and impact of residual state ownership. Each paper combines experience from advanced market economies with in-country empirical work in transition settings. Together these papers represent the most comprehensive and up-to-date comparative analysis yet undertaken of privatization struggles and their impact on corporate governance in Central Europe and Russia.