In the past only a few of the major Italian companies spontaneously adopted self- regulatory tools such as codes of corporate conduct or codes of ethics, claiming the set of values that should guide their conduct and their shareholders and stakeholders were called to comply with. As a reaction...

Die gute Führung von Unternehmen und die Höhe der Managergehälter stehen nach diversen Finanzskandalen von Unternehmen und den Kursmanipulationen am Neuen Markt im Mittelpunkt des öffentlichen Interesses. Im Mai dieses Jahres hat die EU Kommission einen Aktionsplan über „Modernisierung...

This research work is aimed at determining the effectiveness of the Audit Committee (AC), analyzing its impact on the reliability of accounting information issued by spanish listed companies. With this aim, we study whether certain features such as its voluntary or otherwise compulsory...

The present paper uses a comparison of Japan and the US to argue that the debate about corporate governance reform is best framed in terms of systems of complementary instruments and institutions. It argues that the Japanese and US systems of corporate governance differ along many dimensions,...

This paper discusses the current state of and issues related to corporate governance in America after the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. It suggests additional steps necessary to realize improvement in the ways in corporations govern themselves and regulators must operate to make the...

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...

Recent ”law and finance” research implies that minority shareholder rights are heavily affected by the legal tradition. This in turn has economic implications for a company´s ability to raise equity capital from outsiders, i.e., from minority investors. In a famous study by La Porta et al....