This paper exploits several unique institutional features in the Dutch system of corporate control to examine the relations among investor protections, concentrated ownership, and firm performance. Four conclusions emerge. First, controlling shareholders do not appear to ameliorate corporate...

The Berle-Means problem - information and incentive asymmetries disrupting relations between knowledgeable managers and remote investors - has remained a durable issue engaging researchers since the 1930's. However, the Berle-Means paradigm - widely-dispersed, helpless investors facing strong,...

The transmission channels through which monetary policy affects business investment remain opaque. This paper examines the importance of the interest rate and credit channels on business fixed investment in Germany. We have at our disposal three uniquely rich data sets - a panel of financial...

By studying the gap between the discount rates used by executives and shareholders, we assess the extent to which governance problems distort firm behavior. The estimation strategy recovers discount rates used by executives from the pattern of their actual investment spending. Our empirical work...

The sensitivity of business capital formation to its user cost plays a key role in the analysis of many economic issues. Although this elasticity has been the subject of an enormous number of studies, a consensus remains elusive. We develop an estimation strategy that filters panel data in an...

This study provides some perspective on analyzing the effects of corporate taxation on capital formation.