The legal environment is one important determinant of corporate governance. However, within legal families, also cultural differences can explain the level of corporate governance to some extent. We analyze this relationship for the case of Switzerland. Swiss firms are mainly located in two...

The traditional methodology examining optimal boards relates a simple board variable (e.g., independence or board demography) to firm performance, however, ig- noring other board characteristics. This paper investigates how the education and business experience of directors affect firm...

To gain insights about the quality of board's firing decisions, we investigate abnormal stock returns and operating performance around CEO-turnover announcements in a new hand-collected sample of 208 "clean" turnover events between January 1998 and June 2009. Unlike the majority of previous...

The role that corporate governance (CG) plays in contributing to firm performance enhancements has been widely acknowledged. However, the conduit through which CG is able to affect firm performance is an emergent theme. This paper re-examines the relationship between corporate governance (CG)...

Information asymmetry between insiders and outsiders creates various issues for a firm, such as the agency problem where managers pursue their own interests even at the cost of the well-being of the firm's shareholders, and probable external financial constraints where external investors...

The effects of board gender diversity (BGD) on financial stability of financial institutions have long been an important topic, creating a rich strand of literature that focuses extensively on banks. Meanwhile, little is known about the implications of BGD on risk in microfinance institutions...

Das internationale Bankensystem stand in den vergangenen Jahren im Fokus des öffentlichen Interesses. Bei der Diskussion möglicher Optionen zur Verbesserung der Finanzsystemstabilität rückt zunehmend die Corporate Governance in Banken in den Fokus. Der vorliegende Forschungsbericht widmet...

We study the economic consequences of anti-loss trafficking rules, which disallow the use of loss carry-forwards as tax shield after a substantial ownership change. Using staggered changes to these rules, we find that limiting the transfer of tax losses reduces the number of M&As with...

This paper examines the performance indicators of 168 prime standard entities since the introduction of German Accounting Standard (Deutscher Rechnungslegungs Standard (DRS)) No. 20, focusing on the core question of how the use of performance indicators has changed over time. For this purpose,...

Although a growing number of investors are engaging with sovereign entities on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, little academic research investigates this new form of investor activism. Applying universal ownership theory and drawing on eleven case studies of policy...