This paper compares the dividend policy of firms controlled by owners to firms where owners have a minority stake relative to non-owning employees, customers, and the local community. We find that regardless of whether owners or non-owners control the firm, the strong stakeholder uses the...

This paper explores whether ownership matters in a fundamental sense by comparing the performance of stockholder-owned firms with the much less analyzed nonprofit firms. No stakeholder has residual cash flow rights in nonprofit firms, and the control rights are held by customers, employees, and...

Within a broad sample of US manufacturing firms, we find that, controlling for investment opportunities and financial constraints, increased governance quality is associated with higher levels of investment. Increased governance quality is also associated with greater responsiveness of...

This paper first describes the institutional framework for corporate governance in Norway, concluding that its civil law tradition of Roman origin provides a relatively strong protection of shareholder rights. Using a data set which is exceptionally rich and accurate by international standards,...

Using unusually rich and accurate data from Oslo Stock Exchange firms, we find that corporate governance matters for economic performance, that insider ownership matters the most, that outside ownership concentration destroys market value, that direct ownership is superior to indirect, and that...

We examine rights issues on the Oslo Stock Exchange, where seasoned public offerings now take place almost exclusively through use of the relatively expensive standby underwriting method rather than unsinsured rights. We show that the propensity to use standby underwriting increases as expected...