Recent ”law and finance” research implies that minority shareholder rights are heavily affected by the legal tradition. This in turn has economic implications for a company´s ability to raise equity capital from outsiders, i.e., from minority investors. In a famous study by La Porta et al....

We study whether the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 made firms less opaque. For identification, we use a difference-in-differences estimation approach and compare EU firms that are cross-listed in the US—and therefore subject to SOX—with comparable EU firms that are not cross-listed. We...

In the past only a few of the major Italian companies spontaneously adopted self- regulatory tools such as codes of corporate conduct or codes of ethics, claiming the set of values that should guide their conduct and their shareholders and stakeholders were called to comply with. As a reaction...

We analyse the relationship between the distribution of ownership and the allocation of control in Danish closely held corporations. First, we investigate why firms have boards. Second, we identify relationships between owners, boardmembers and CEOs in these firms. Third, we show the presence of...

This paper investigates the implications of the fair value protections contemplated by the standard corporate contract (i.e., the standard contract form for which corporate law provides) for the entrepreneur-venture capitalist relationship, focusing, in particular, on unavoidable...

An international tax haven is usually a low-tax jurisdiction that seeks to attract investment by foreign investors. But, there are many state and local jurisdictions within federal systems that set zero tax rates on personal or corporate income, consumption, property, and wealth in an effort to...

This paper analyses the potential effects of the open method of co-ordination on pension reforms in the European Union from an economic point of view. The main results are: (1) For the first time, the Commission formally participates in the input of pension policy-formation of the member states,...

Should the EU introduce an Optional European Contract Law Code and what should it look like? By applying economic theories of federalism and regulatory competition (legal federalism), it is shown why an Optional Code would be a very suitable legal instrument within a two-level European System of...

Given the background of changing institutional competencies in the European Union, we analyze the choice of asylum law standards of national and European parliaments, the Council of the European Union and codecision between the Council and the European Parliament. In a two country model we nd...

In this paper, we examine the inconclusive debate on regulatory competition in Europe. We demonstrate that the recent expansion in the EU company law has created archetypal underpinning for formation of regulatory competition: the ground-breaking triptych of the ECJ on Centros, Überseering, and...