2.3. Corporate governance and volatility
In our model, there need not be any actual expropriation by managers while times are good, for example when αR⩾1. Typically, in most emerging markets α is above 0.3 (i.e., much higher than is usual in the U.S.), so a reasonably optimistic expectation for R might be enough to remove the incentive for managerial theft. Detailed examination of insider ownership in some emerging markets is in La Porta et al. (1999) and LLSV (1999b), who find, for example, that the median cash flow rights (in companies where insiders control more than 20% of the votes) are 41% in Argentina, 26% in Korea, 28% in Hong Kong, 34% in Mexico, 20% in Israel, and 31% in Singapore. This suggests that the “institutions” that protect investors’ rights are not important as long as growth lasts, because managers do not want to steal. It may even be possible to attract a great deal of outside capital during a period when the economy expands. But when growth prospects decline, the lack of good corporate governance becomes important. Without effective shareholder protection, a mild shock can entail a large increase in stealing, which in turn causes a large depreciation. This explains, for example, how a country can grow rapidly even if its institutions are flawed. Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia argues that rapid growth implies that the institutions are good: “We were growing at the rate of more than 8% a year for almost ten years. You must give us credit for knowing how to run the country” (The Far Eastern Economic Review, July 2, 1998, p. 15.) However, our model shows that institutions matter most when an economy experiences a downturn.
According to this argument, a country can grow rapidly for an indefinite period even if it has weak protection for shareholder rights. But weak institutions of this kind make a country vulnerable, in the sense that a small negative shock to expected future earnings can have a large effect on the economy. If this theory is correct, institutions affect volatility, specifically the size of the decline in asset values and exchange rates when there is an adverse shock to expected future earnings.
Our argument suggests two empirical issues to investigate. First, across countries where there is some initial loss of confidence, does the exchange rate depreciate more when corporate governance is weaker? We deal with this in Section 5. Our simple model is silent on whether de facto or de jure shareholder and creditor rights matter more. We can test these alternatives by examining which kinds of rights were more important in determining the extent of exchange rate depreciation in 1997–98. Second, the model predicts that countries with poor corporate governance should also have weaker ex post stock market performance if we include the 1997–98 crisis. We examine the evidence on this point in Section 6.