Governance concerns the organisation of transactions. Four research themes regarding the governance of chains and networks are identified: decision rights, income rights, alignment, and cognition.

Address given in shortened form at the occasion of accepting the appointment as Full Professor of "Institutional Design of Integrating Markets" at the Rotterdam School of Management / Faculteit Bedrijfskunde of Erasmus University Rotterdam on Friday, June 15, 2001

We examine the relation between the quality of corporate governance and the value of excess cash for large European firms (FTSEurofirst 300 Index). We use Deminor ratings for Shareholder rights, Takeover defences, Disclosure and Board as proxies for the quality of corporate governance. We find...

Over the last decade, the going private market has experienced a considerable boom in size and also has become more interesting for private equity investors that are looking to partner with incumbent management. This offers managers the choice to take the firm private themselves in a traditional...

The Dutch East India Company or VOC in 1602 showed many characteristics of modern corporations, including limited liability, freely transferable shares, and well-defined managerial functions. However, we challenge the notion of the VOC as the precursor of modern corporations to argue that the...

Using data spanning the 1996-1998 fiscal years of 247 of Japan's largest manufacturers, we empirically evaluate the extent to which a firm's investment behavior and financial performance is influenced by its ownership structure. To do so, we examine six distinct categories of Japanese...

Royal Ahold (Koninklijke Ahold NV) was one of the major success stories in the 1990s and is one of the major failures in corporate governance, suffering a complete meltdown in 2003. This clinical study analyzes Ahold’s growth strategy through acquisitions and isolates the cause of the...