Recent empirical work shows that a better legal environment leads to lowerexpected rates of return in an international cross-section of countries. Thispaper investigates whether differences in firm-specific corporate governancealso help to explain expected returns in a cross-section of firms...

The question of whether the CEO should also serve as chairman of the board is one of themost hotly debated issues in the recent corporate governance discussion. While agencytheoreticarguments advocate a separation of decision and control functions, the empiricalevidence focusing on U.S....

This paper analyzes the determinants of the German corporate governance ratingrecently developed by Drobetz, Schillhofer, and Zimmermann (2004). We find anon- linear relationship between ownership concentration and the quality of firmlevelcorporate governance as measured by the rating. Firms...

Recent research on central bank governance has focused mainly on their monetary policy task. As the sub-prime loan market turmoil reminded us - central banks play a crucial role in financial markets not only in setting monetary policy, but also in ensuring their soundness and stability. In this...

In this paper, we examine the inconclusive debate on regulatory competition in Europe. We demonstrate that the recent expansion in the EU company law has created archetypal underpinning for formation of regulatory competition: the ground-breaking "triptych" of the ECJ on Centros, Überseering,...

We study corporate philanthropy using an original database that includes firm-level data on dollar giving, giving priorities, governance, and managerial involvement in giving programs. Results provide some support for the theory that giving enhances shareholder value, as firms in the same...

This paper gives an overview over corporate governance and banking regulation in Germany. Particular attention is put on legal and regulatory changes that were made in response to the financial market crisis. The paper shows that the changes mainly focus on the remuneration of managers and on...

We empirically study the use of value-based management systems in listed German firms and examine implications for firms' stock market performance. Using a novel, hand-collected data set covering 1,083 firm years from 2002 to 2008, we find that value-based management systems become increasingly...

The paper shows the ways of disclosing financial risks by IFRS 7 and certain types of sensitivity analysis. The different possibilities of preparing a sensitivity analysis, such as value at risk are illustrated and their suitability for reporting are faced critically. Following, the manner of...

The Financial Reporting Enforcement Panel (FREP) has been examining financial reporting of companies listed in the regulated market in Germany since 1.7.2005. The paper analyzes the enforcement disclosure quality between 2006 and 2008 by comparing the published activity reports of the panel with...