We analyze the impact of a 75 pct. Break-Through rule on 1,035 European firms with dual class shares. In 3-5 pct. of the firms the controlling owners incur a direct loss of control, whereas in additional 11-17 pct. of the firms the controlling owners are likely to incur a control loss. Firms in...

This paper uses a unique dataset from Denmark to investigate the impact of family characteristics in corporate decision making and the consequences of these decisions on firm performance. We focus on the decision to appoint either a family or external chief executive officer (CEO). The paper...

This paper exploits a natural experiment to investigate the impact of participation constraints on households' decision to invest in the stock market. Exogenous variation in financial wealth results from unexpected inheritance due to sudden deaths, and allows us to examine the causal impact of...

Entrepreneurial finance literature has highlighted that institutional investors are the main contributors to private equity funds. This paper complements these findings by documenting that institutional investors also invest directly in private equity. A major concern for such investments is the...

We investigate contributions of independent directors to shareholder value by examining stock price reactions to sudden deaths in the U.S. from 1994 to 2007. We find, first, that following director death, stock prices drop by 0.85% on average. Second, the degree of independence and board...

The entrepreneurial finance literature has highlighted that institutional investors are the main contributors to private equity funds. This paper complements these findings by documenting that institutional investors also invest directly in private equity. A major concern for such investments is...

Firms in the European countries today have the possibility of choosing from a range of control enhancing mechanisms giving the controlling owners an amount of influence which is disproportional to their share of cash flow. The list of control enhancing mechanisms includes dual class shares,...

Boards are endogenously chosen institutions determined by observable and unobservable firm characteristics. Empirical studies of large publicly traded firms have successfully controlled for observable determinants of board size and shown a robust negative relationship between board size and firm...

This paper uses a unique dataset from Denmark to investigate the impact of family characteristics in corporate decision making and the consequences of these decisions on firm performance. We focus on the decision to appoint either a family or external chief executive officer (CEO). The paper...

Empirical studies of large publicly traded firms have shown a robust negative relationship between board size and firm performance. The evidence on small and medium-sized firms is less clear; we show that existing work has been incomplete in analyzing the causal relationship due to weak...