This paper analyzes the governance and performance of firms which, according to simplistic agency theory, should not be viable. These firms are fully or partially owned by a foundation which itself is not owned by natural or legal persons. Therefore, residual claimholders have restricted or no...

This study examines whether and how anticorruption efforts may mitigate the risk of corporate fraud. Based on a sample of Chinese publicly listed firms over the period of 2008 to 2017, we find that anticorruption efforts reduce the likelihood of fraud commission and increase the likelihood of...

We investigate the emergence of socially responsible (SR) production through consumer decisions. Our experimental treatments vary market competitiveness and consumers information on social responsibility in production. We show that irrespective of consumers information SR production reduces...

In four studies (S1-S4; N = 320) we investigated whether moral hypocrisy (MH) is motivated by conscious impression management concerns or whether it is self-deceptive. In a dictator game, MH occurred both within participants (saying one thing, doing another; S1) and between participants (doing...

We introduce the give-or-destroy game that allows us to fully elicit an individual s social preference schedule. We find that about one third of the population exhibits both pro-social and anti-social preferences that are independent of payoff comparisons with those who are affected. We call...

This paper investigates how family ownership, control and management affect firm investment performance. We use the identity of the CEO and the COB to establish under what management the firm is: founder, descendent or external management. The analysis shows that founder management has no effect...

This paper analyzes the role of corporate culture in the financial industry. Theoretical literature emphasizes the role of corporate culture in the sorting process of workers into firms. We take this argument to the empirics and analyze whether banks that differ in their corporate culture use...

We analyze political representation of preferences of different income groups by matching referendum outcomes for low, middle, and high-income voters with individual legislators decisions on identical policy proposals. Results indicate that legislators more closely represent preferences of rich...

This paper studies the impact of economic inequality on political polarization. Using a unique dataset covering different measures of regional income inequality as well as federal and state election outcomes at the county level in Germany, we investigate whether inequality influences the share...