Foreign ownership and firm value : evidence from Japan / Stephen P. Ferris, Kwangwoo Park -- The impact of regulatory change on insider trading profitability : some early evidence from New Zealand / Aaron Gilbert, Alireza Tourani-Rad, Tomasz Piotr Wisniewski -- Corporate governance mechanisms in action : the case of Air Canada / Sean M. Hennessey -- Further evidence on institutional ownership and corporate value / William W. Jennings -- The two dimensions of corporate governance independence / Karim S. Rebeiz -- Legal features of traded securities and high price volatility / Nidal Rashid Sabri -- Corporate governance and firms value in emerging markets : the case of Jordan / Ritab Al-Khouri -- Reforms in corporate governance in Asia after the financial crisis / Helen Cabalu -- China's institutional environment and corporate governance / Jean Jinghan Chen -- Legal issues of enforcement for corporate governance in Vietnam : constraints and recommendations / Bui Trong Dan.

Papers in this volume focus on corporate governance broadly defined as the system of control that helps corporations effectively manage, administer, and direct economic resources. Questions of what and how to produce become equally important as organizations strive to better serve demanding customers. As a result, the design and control of effective organizations have become an integral part of financial economics. Traditionally, organization structure has been described by the vertical and horizontal relationships among the firm, its customers and suppliers. More recently, researchers have come to understand that the efficiency of firms depends upon the ability of participants to find effective means to minimize the transaction costs of coordinating productive activity. As financial economists have learned, resource allocation will be efficient so long as transaction costs remain low and property rights can be freely assigned and exchanged. An important problem that must be addressed is the so-called agency problem resulting from the natural conflict between owners and managers. Agency costs are the explicit and implicit transaction costs necessary to overcome the natural divergence of interest between agent managers and principal stockholders. The value-maximizing organization design minimizes unproductive conflict within the firm. Papers in this volume show how corporate control mechanisms inside and outside the firm have evolved around the world to allocate decision authority to that person or organization best able to perform a given task.

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