This symposium is intended to provide a platform for researchers to discuss fundamental research and policy issues related to emerging financial markets. Emerging economies, including China, India, Brazil, Russia, South Africa and others, have experienced rapid economic growth over the past several decades and they now constitute half of the world’s GDP. Capital markets in those countries have been developed more slowly and insufficiently to fund the expanding growth opportunities. Further, uneven quality domestic institutions impede external capital from satisfying that unmet demand for capital. With these challenges, there has been a growing research interest in using the unique institutional settings and rich data sources in emerging economies to study a range of fundamental questions in finance.