In three self-contained essays, this dissertation deals with the impact of board structure on firm performance and with determinants of executive compensation, director compensation, and payout policy. Each of the three chapters is based on panel data sets of German firms. Distinguishing...

The purpose of this dissertation thesis is to investigate how changes in the institutional setting have affected the payout policy of German firms. This dissertation thesis further contributes to the literature on event study methodology by analyzing the measurment of abnormal credit default...

I examine the role of unobserved heterogeneities of directors as a determinant of firm performance. Based on a panel data set of 898 German firms covering the period 1992-2011, I find director fixed effects are almost as important in explaining firm performance as executive fixed effects and a...