The paper puts the outcome during the most recent financial crisis in a historical perspective by taking a closer look at the frequency of extreme events in the economic history of Denmark, in some cases based on time series back to the late 1600s. We focus on the frequency distribution of a...

Using ownership and control data for 890 firm-years, this paper examines the concentration of capital and voting rights in British companies in the second half of the nineteenth century. We find that both capital and voting rights were diffuse by modern-day standards. This implies that ownership...

Using ownership and control data for 890 firm-years, this paper examines the concentration of capital and voting rights in British companies in the second half of the nineteenth century. We find that both capital and voting rights were diffuse by modern-day standards. This implies that ownership...

Most pre-crisis explanations of the various corporate governance systems have considered the separation between ownership and control to be an advantage of the Anglo-American economies. They have also attributed the failure of other countries to achieve these efficient arrangements to their...

This paper studies the role of activist investors in the M&A market. Our theory proposes that activist investors have an inherent advantage relative to bidders in pressuring entrenched incumbents to sell. As counterparties to the acquisition, bidders have a fundamental conflict of interests with...

Little evidence exists on whether boards help managers make better decisions. We provide evidence that strong and independent boards help overconfident CEOs avoid honest mistakes when they seek to acquire other companies. In addition, we find that once-overconfident CEOs make better acquisition...

Ownership takeovers often follow complex strategies where the control of the target firm is acquired through a sequence of independent contracts. Based on this observation, we develop a novel theoretical model wherein the acquiring firm decides on the number of steps towards the full ownership...