We uncover a positive relationship between firms' corporate governance quality, as measured by the degree of managerial entrenchment, and the quality of their real investment decisions. Firms whose managers are less entrenched invest more, invest more in line with their investment opportunities...

To date little is known about how long equity ownership lasts, what determines its length, and whether ownership duration is related to firm performance. Using a unique time series of equity holdings over eleven years, we find that on average the firm's largest owner stays less than three years...

We find that the controlling family holds both the chief executive officer and chair positions in 79% of Norwegian family firms. The family holds more governance positions when it owns large stakes in small, profitable, low-risk firms. This result suggests that the family trades off expected...

We find that potential conflicts between majority and minority shareholders strongly influence how dividends respond to taxes. When the controlling shareholder has a smaller stake, the incentives to extract private benefits are stronger – a shareholder conflict that can be mitigated by...

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...

We examine how negative liquidity shocks to households propagate to firms. We show that higher taxes on the personal home of private firms' controlling shareholders are associated with higher dividend and salary payments from firms to shareholders and with lower cash holdings, investments,...

We show how a recent drop in the Norwegian capital uplift rate by two percentage points changes optimal field design and reduces field value for shareholders. Although optimal design changes considerably and value drops by 12%, the ability to reoptimize design after the shock is worth only 1.5%...

This chapter reports main findings from a comprehensive study of how Norwegian family firms are governed and how they behave and perform as economic entities. Analyzing all firms from 2000 to 2015, we show that the family firm represents the most widespread way of organizing economic activity,...

Little is known about the family firm as an economic entity except for the very few family firms that are public. Our paper describes a wide range of governance and finance characteristics in the population of all private and public family firms with limited liability. We find that the family...

We find that forcing radical gender balance on corporate boards is associated with increased board independence and reduced firm value. A mandatory 40-percent gender quota shifts the average fraction of independent directors from 46 to 67 percent because female directors are much more often...