Legal protection of investors, corporate governance, and investable premia in emerging markets

We examine the interaction between the legal protection of investors, corporate governance, and investable premia in emerging markets. In a multi-country setting and using a novel dataset we find that better-governed firms experience significantly greater stock price increases upon equity market liberalization. We look to see whether well-governed firms in poorly governed countries enjoy an investability premium as measured by Tobin's q. We find that they do. Investors look beyond the seemingly weak country-level governance structures, and focus on corporate governance.