This paper analyses the German corporate law reform's effect on the publicly listed companies' ownership and performance. First, theoretically plausible implications of the most important laws that were issued 1990-2009 are provided, then an empirical analysis using 1997-2008 panel data...

The dominant theory in Anglo-American jurisdictions as far as determining the objective of large public companies, has been, and still appears to be, the shareholder primacy theory. Nevertheless, it would seem that in the past 20 years the stakeholder theory has become increasingly popular in...

We examine the effectiveness of the "Comply or Explain" approach to corporate governance in the UK. Using a unique database of 245 non-financial companies for the period 1998-2004, we find an increasing trend of compliance with the Combined Code, but a frequent use of standard explanations in...

The present paper explores the link between bankruptcy law and firms' dynamics, focusing on Italy as a case study. Relying on a previous literature dealing with the concept of entrepreneurship “friendly” bankruptcy law, we stress the idea that bankruptcy institutions, although connected to a...