Book Review: Jeffrey N. Gordon and Mark J. Roe, Eds., Convergence and Persistence in Corporate Governance

Abstract

Convergence and Persistence in Corporate Governance does not add groundbreaking new insights to the relevant debate or deliberate extensively on the most recent developments. Bringing together most of the trend-setting articles in a slightly revised form in a concise volume, however, serves an important function: it can be inferred from the various contributions that the comprehensive and hence somewhat abstract theories on convergence or persistence do not rep-resent the end of comparative corporate governance scholarship but need testing by comparing diverse aspects of corporate governance jurisdiction by jurisdiction on a concrete and detailed basis.

Obviously, the formidable challenges awaiting corporate governance research can be facilitated considerably by inducing as many experts as possible to participate in the endeavour. Winning them over by revealing the fascination of this streak of legal scholarship and its immense potential to produce both normative (is there one best institutional arrangement?) and descriptive (what developments are to be expected and how can the evolution of institutions be influenced?) in-sights in the process of globalisation is facilitated by the fact that this book addresses a broad circle of academics, practitioners and students of advanced issues of corporate governance

Keywords: Comparative Corporate Governance, Convergence, Path Dependence, Regulatory Competition

JEL Classification: K22, D21, D22, D23, L22