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...

We explore to what extent firms deliberately manage their financial reports by exploiting the flexibility of generally accepted accounting principles. Using a sample of Oslo Stock Exchange-listed firms with 20-50% equity holdings in other firms, we find that firms with high financial leverage...

Using a data base which is exceptionally rich and accurate by international standards, this paper quantifies a wide range of ownership structure characteristics for all Oslo Stock Exchange firms in the period 1989–1997. Overall, we find that their ownership structures differ remarkably from...

Norway is the first, and so far the only, country to mandate a minimum fraction of female and male directors on corporate boards. We find that after a new gender balance law surprisingly stipulated that the firm must be liquidated unless at least 40% of its directors are of each gender, half the...

We analyze minority freezeout offers in a legal environment where minority stockholders can reject the offer and ask the court to value their nontendered stock. This regulatory setting allows us to observe the disciplining effect of legal enforcement on stockholder behavior. We find that...