Culture, law, and corporate governance

This article advances a new framework for investigating a simple yet fundamental question: in what ways does the law on the books reflect cultural values? We analyze relations between indices of investors' legal rights-as coded by La Porta et al. (LLSV)-and national cultural profiles. These indices correlate with cultural priorities that are consistent with societal acceptance of litigation. Indices of formalism in civil procedure exhibit similar correlations. Such societal stance may be related to a heritage of British rule. Grouping countries according to legal families-the cornerstone of LLSV's legal approach-provides only a partial depiction of the universe of corporate governance regimes. Our findings cast doubt on the alleged general supremacy of statutes in common law countries. These findings have implications for understanding diversity and convergence in corporate governance systems and for a systematic analysis of the interface between law and social institutions. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.