Institutional theory suggests that informal institutions effectively constrain human behavior. Culturally embedded norms and values align corporate governance with socially acceptable outcomes. We argue that active foreign investors can act as agents of change in corporate governance....

Juridical-political theories suggest that legal origin (La Porta et al. (1997)) and political factors (Roe (2003)) matters for firm performance. In Scandinavia there are a number of legal practices, with common political roots, that impinge on the distribution of corporate control, which...

Examining a large number of Swedish listed firms, this paper analyses how institutional owners affects the investment decisions and firm performance. During the last decades the ownership structure of Swedish firms has undergone dramatic changes: institutional and foreign investors have been...

This paper replicates and extends the empirical work of Boyd’s 1995 article: CEO Duality and Firm Performance: A Contingency Model. We retest Boyd’s hypotheses using a database of over 11,000 Swedish firms from the year 2005 to 2009. Similar to Boyd, we find that CEO duality is positively...

This paper investigates the link between institutional ownership and dividend policy. Utilizing a dividend payout model, which accounts for earnings trends and partial adjustments of dividends, a positive but marginally diminishing relation is found between institutional ownership and dividends....

This paper investigates the determinants of liability maturity choice in transition markets. We formulate a model of ¯rm value maximization that describes managers' choice of optimal debt structure. The theoretical predictions are tested using a unique panel of 4,300 Ukrainian firms during the...

The paper studies the persistence of profit and its determinants in emerging markets. We apply Markov chain analysis, dynamic panel GMM estimation, and quantile regression techniques to a panel of approximately 3,000 Ukrainian companies. The empirical results show a moderate level of profit...

We examine why firms change their main bank and how this affects loans, interest payments and firm performance after switching. Using unique firm-bank matched Ukrainian data, the treatment effect estimates suggest that more transparent and riskier companies are more likely to switch their main...

Shares with more voting rights than cash flow rights provide their owners with a disproportional influence that is often found to destroy the value of outside equity. This is taken as evidence of discretionary use of power. However, concentration of power does not necessarily result from control...

Private equity companies have become a major force in the economic landscape. Financial- and operational-engineering are innovative characteristics of this emerging method of finance. The existing empirical data provide strong evidence that private equity activity contribute positively to the...