Using rich and accurate data from Oslo Stock Exchange firms, we find that corporate governance matters for economic performance, insider ownership matters the most, outside ownership concentration destroys market value, direct ownership seems superior to indirect, and that performance decreases...

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...

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...

We find that shareholder turnout at the general meeting of Norwegian public firms varies between 11% and 95%, being 59% on average. This turnout behavior implies that majority control requires less than one third of the average firm's shares, and that attending shareholders vote for 1.7 times...

Within a broad sample of US manufacturing firms, we find that, controlling for investment opportunities and financial constraints, increased governance quality is associated with higher levels of investment. Increased governance quality is also associated with greater responsiveness of...