A central goal in devising a system of courts is to make judicial services easily accessible. As a consequence, justice is usually administered in a geographically decentralized fashion: trial courts are distributed across the territory in which the jurisdiction's law is applied. Corporate law,...

This paper contributes to the research on corporate governance by predicting the effects of European takeover regulation. In particular, we investigate whether the recent reforms of takeover regulation in Europe are leading to a harmonization of the national legislations. With the help of 150...

In recent years, the emphasis in corporate governance has shifted from board composition, independent directors, separating the position of chairperson and CEO, and establishing board committees to “being in control” and risk management issues. However, the corporate law perspective of...

This paper examines international differences in firms' cost of equity capital across 40 countries. We analyze whether the effectiveness of a country's legal institutions and securities regulation is systematically related to cross-country differences in the cost of equity capital. We employ...

Belgium did not experience major governance collapses in the nineties. However, the country must not but envied. The corporate governance debate started late and experienced mixed developments. Three different corporate governance codes were published in 1998. The publication of these codes...

Financial economists and commercial providers of governance services have in recent years created measures of the quality of firms' corporate governance which collapse into a single number (a governance index or rating) the multiple dimensions of a company's governance. The aim of this paper is...

In this paper, I analyse the rise of mandatory structure of bankers' pay in Europe as outcome of criticism of pre-crisis remuneration practices at financial institutions. Whether flawed bankers' pay contributed to the financial crisis is still debated amongst scholars. It appears more likely...

Between 1950 and 2005, the composition of large public company boards dramatically shifted towards independent directors, from approximately 20% independents to 75% independents. The standards for independence also became increasingly rigorous over the period. The available empirical evidence...

Corporate governance codes and corporate law contain provisions of internal control and risk management. First, this paper analyses the state of the art of these provisions in five Western European countries. The regulatory framework stretches from a Frühwarnsystem in Germany over the internal...

An appropriate division of power between the board of directors and shareholders of the company is quintessential for the success of the company. However, for a long period of time the monitoring powers of the shareholders were limited. Recently, both the European and the national member states'...