Christensen, Hail & Leuz on Securities Regulation in the European Union

Hans Bonde Christensen, Luzi Hail, and Christian Leuz have posted Capital-Market Effects of Securities Regulation: Prior Conditions, Implementation, and Enforcement on SSRN with the following abstract:

We examine the capital-market effects of changes in securities regulation in the European Union (EU) aimed at reducing market abuse and increasing transparency. To estimate causal effects for the population of EU firms, we exploit that for plausibly exogenous reasons, like national legislative procedures, EU countries adopted these directives at different times. We find significant increases in market liquidity, but the effects are stronger in countries with stricter implementation and traditionally more stringent securities regulation. The findings suggest that countries with initially weaker regulation do not catch up with stronger countries, and that countries diverge more upon harmonizing regulation.