2.4.3 Conclusion

The law on ownership disclosure is positively related to other measures of shareholder protection. In particular, we observe a strong positive relationship between ownership disclosure mies and variables that protect minority shareholders against large shareholders. Perhaps, surprisingly, there is also a positive relationship between the mies on ownership disclosure and widely held ownership. This could be interpreted as a confirmation of the law and finance literature, but not necessarily so. After all, polities or other factors could also explain why countries with dispersed shareholder ownership are more likely to provide strict mies on ownership disclosure. Indeed, non-quantitative research shows that various factors contribute to the dispersion of shareholder ownership, with shareholder protection playing a minor role.1

Finally, our results indicate that there is hardly any correlation between the variable for ownership disclosure and the variable for stock market capitalisation. The two might be unrelated, as previous studies using the CBR dataset suggest. By contrast, if we were to assume that ownership disclosure roles do have a positive impact on stock market capitalisation, one possible explanation for why our data does not show a positive correlation between the two variables is that in order for ownership disclosure mies to have such impact, they need to be vigorously enforced.