We allow the preference of a political majority to determine both the corporate governance structure and the division of profits between human and financial capital. In a democratic society where financial wealth is concentrated, a political majority may prefer to restrain governance by...

We argue in favour of the shareholder model of the firm for three main reasons. First, serving multiple stakeholders leads to ill-defined property rights. What sounds like a fair compromise between stakeholders can easily evolve in a permanent struggle between the stakeholders about the ultimate...

We argue that the recent corporate governance reform in the Netherlands provides a natural experiment to explore the impact of changes in corporate governance on financing policy. We find that, relative to a control sample of comparable firms outside the Netherlands, Dutch firms significantly...

This paper shows that the presence of conditional staging in R&D (Research & Development) has a critical impact on portfolio risk, and changes diversification arguments when a portfolio is constructed. When R&D projects exhibit option-like characteristics, correlation between projects plays a...

The inequality dataset compiled in the 1990s by the World Bank and extended by the UN has been both widely used and strongly criticized. The criticisms raise questions about conclusions drawn from secondary inequality datasets in general. We develop techniques to deal with national and...

Meta-analysis is a research method to synthesise previously obtained research results. It is best seen as a statistical approach towards reviewing and summarising the literature. This paper aims to introduce and critically review the research method of meta-analysis and to illustrate its...

This study presents a dynamic model for the private equity market in which information revelation and uncertainty rationally explain the cyclical pattern of investment flows into private equity. The net benefit of private equity over public equity is i) uncertain and ii) agents have private...

Boards of directors face the twin task of disciplining and screening executives. To perform these tasks directors do not have detailed information about executives' behaviour, and only infrequently have information about the success or failure of initiated strategies, reorganizations, mergers...

An interlock between two firms occurs if the firms share one or more directors in their boards of directors. We explore the effect of interlocks on firm performance for 101 large Dutch firms using a large and new panel database. We use five different performance measures, and for each...

This paper uses a unified treatment of real options and game theory to examine value appropriation in takeovers within a competitive environment of imperfect information. The integrated model considers a potential target as a shared real option on a bundle of resources. Competing potential...