We study the effect of media coverage on corporate governance by focusing on Russia in the period 1999-2002. This setting offers us three ideal conditions for such a study: plenty of corporate governance violations, no alternative mechanisms to address them, and the presence of an investment fund (the Hermitage) that actively lobbies the international press to shame companies perpetrating those violations. We find that Hermitage's lobbying is effective in increasing the coverage of corporate governance violations in the Anglo-American press. We also find that coverage in the Anglo-American press increases the probability that a corporate governance violation is reversed. This effect is present even when we instrument coverage with an exogenous determinant, i.e. the Hermitage's portfolio composition at the beginning of the period. The Hermitage's strategy seems to work in part by impacting Russian companies' reputation abroad and in part by forcing regulators into action.

We study the effect of media coverage on corporate governance by focusing on Russia in the period 1999 to 2002. We find that an investment fund's lobbying increases coverage of corporate governance violations in the Anglo-American press. We also find that coverage in the Anglo-American press increases the probability that a corporate governance violation is reversed. This effect is present even when we instrument coverage with an exogenous determinant, the fund's portfolio composition at the beginning of the period. The fund's strategy seems to work in part by impacting Russian companies' reputation abroad and in part by forcing regulators into action. Copyright (c) 2008 by The American Finance Association.

We study the effect of media coverage on corporate governance by focusing on Russia in the period 1999-2002. This setting offers us three ideal conditions for such a study: plenty of corporate governance violations, no alternative mechanisms to address them, and the presence of an investment fund (the Hermitage) that actively lobbies the international press to shame companies perpetrating those violations. We find that Hermitage's lobbying is effective in increasing the coverage of corporate governance violations in the Anglo-American press. We also find that coverage in the Anglo-American press increases the probability that a corporate governance violation is reversed. This effect is present even when we instrument coverage with an exogenous determinant, i.e. the Hermitage's portfolio composition at the beginning of the period. The Hermitage's strategy seems to work in part by impacting Russian companies' reputation abroad and in part by forcing regulators into action.

This paper studies the effect of poor governance quality on foreign direct investment in Russia. Using a survey of businesses across forty administrative districts, we find that higher frequency of using illegal payments and higher pressure from regulatory agencies, enforcement authorities, and criminals, negatively affect foreign direct investment. Our identification strategy builds on the exogenous cross-regional variation in worker strikes during 1895-1914, the period before the October Revolution. We find that moving from the average to the top governance quality across Russian regions more than doubles the FDI stock.