Multinational companies can exploit the tax advantage of debt more aggressively than national companies by shifting debt from affiliates in low tax countries to affiliates in high tax countries. Previous papers have either omitted internal debt or external debt from the analysis. We are the...

The present study was designed to determine the relationship between corporate governance and tax avoidance in an international setting. Financial and governance data sourced from the Datastream database for a sample of Japanese and UK firms between 2012 and 2017 are used. First, we examine the...

Building on a unique panel data set of German Prime Standard companies for the period 2005-2008, this paper investigates the influencing factors of both director compensation levels and structure, i.e. the probability of performance-based compensation. Drawing on agency theory arguments and...

This paper empirically analyses whether both personal and corporate taxation have an impact on companies' capital structure decisions. We investigate the effect of the difference in taxation of debt and equity financing on capital structures. Our empirical results, based on a comprehensive panel...

Under the Nordic dual income tax system, the taxpayer's total tax bill depends not only on his total income but also on the division of that income between capital income and labor income. This has created new room for tax avoidance, especially for active owners of (closed) corporations. For...

This study examines how globalization of corporate governance practices influence the risk of European CEOs being dismissed. We argue that the harsh monitoring of the American corporate governance system spills over to the rest of the world as a result of this globalization. We focus on direct...

This paper provides empirical evidence consistent with the facts that (1) social networks may strongly affect board composition and (2) social networks may be detrimental to corporate governance. Our empirical investigation relies on a unique dataset on executives and outside directors of...

It is widely believed that the ideal board in corporations is composed almost entirely of independent (outside) directors. In contrast, this paper shows that some lack of board independence can be in the interest of shareholders. This follows because a lack of board independence serves as a...

We investigate whether outside board memberships of CEOs signal expertise or entrenchment. The analysis is based on panel data of the largest German companies covering the period from 1996 to 2008. Supporting the entrenchment hypothesis, our analysis reveals that firms having a CEO with one or...