A SINGLE CORPORATE GOVERNANCE SYSTEM?

Since the end of the 90's, the evolution of world capitalism and the adjustment of corporate governance systems constitute a broad matter of discussion for academics. The periods of financial crisis call into question the relevance of corporate governance models. As was the case following the Asian crisis, the subprime crisis questioned the efficiency of the dominant Anglo-Saxon governance model. As per Hansmann and Kraakman (2001) and Denis and Mc Connell (2003), this model tends to be generalized worldwide.
As per Charreaux (2004), two approaches may explain the persistence of several national corporate governance systems. First, disciplinary theories based on the hypotheses of rent-extraction and the protection of investors; these include the legal-financial (La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer and Vishny, 1998, 1999, 2000), the political-financial (Roe, 1994, 2000 ; Coffee, 1999 ; Rajan and Zingales, 2003 ; Pagano and Volpin, 2001 ; Gourevitch and Shinn, 2005), the allocations (Beck and al., 2001, 2003 ; d'Acemoglu and al., 2002) and the sociocultural (La porta and al., 1997 ; Coffee, 2001 ; Licht, 2001) theses. Second, the productive theories that bring together thoughts on the varieties of capitalism (Hall, 1999 ; Hall and Soskice, 2001, 2002 ; Boyer, 2002 ; Hall and Gingerich, 2009) and regulationist (Boyer and Saillard, 2002). These include, in addition to incentive factors, cognitive determinants such as educational, technical or relational aspects. The dominant thesis regarding the analysis of national governance systems is that of La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer and Vishny (1998, 1999, 2000). As per these authors, the efficiency of an economic system is determined by the legal environment which is the key factor when elaborating financial policies but also as far as the allocation of the capital of firms is concerned and, finally, for determining the governance model of an economic area. As per LLSV, the legal environment is determined by the initial legal tradition of the countries and they oppose the Common Law (the Anglo-Saxon tradition) and the Civil Law (of Roman origin).
The aim of this paper is to test the persistence of a dichotomy between the two main corporate governance models resulting from the legal traditions that have been highlighted by LLSV, in terms of capital structure. To achieve this, we carried out a comparison between the capital structure of US and French firms, even if this choice may seem arbitrary. The analysis, based on firms quoted on the DJ30 and CAC40 indices, implies the use of tests comparing means of variables that have been constructed in order to highlight the balance of power of capital structure forces on these markets. Our results tend to confirm the persistence of a dichotomy between capital structures of firms quoted on these indices. This result puts into question the idea of any single way of considering corporate governance as preconized into corporate governance codes and laws. The persistence of differences in terms of capital structures between Anglo-Saxon and European economies and the potential alignment of governance practices could affect the coherence of the systems resulting in weak corporate performances (Hall and Soskice, 2001, 2002).