INVESTMENT FOR GROWTH – a comparative study of firm performance in Scandinavia and South East Asia

Previous studies have shown that differences in corporate governance systems and both formal and informal institutions, such as traditions and laws appear to correlate with firm performance. It has been suggested that Scandinavia and South East Asia have similar ownership structures with vote-differentiated shares, pyramids and strong family ownership. However, the regions have different legal traditions and also differ substantially in informal institutions. This paper is a study of firm performance for a unbalanced dataset of listed firms in Scandinavia (represented by Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) and South East Asia (represented by Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea), from 1998 to 2006. Firm performance is estimated using both Tobin’s Q and the Marginal q-approach.