Under the German system of "codetermination," employees are legally allocated some control rights over corporate assets, in the form of board seats. We empirically investigate the implications of equal board representation compared with one-third employee representation and find a 26% stock...

En utilisant un système d'équations simultané, estimé sur l'ensemble des entreprises inscrites à la bourse suisse, nos résultats montrent que la taille du conseil d'administration résulte d'un mécanisme indépendant de gouvernance d'entreprise. Ceci implique qu'il existe véritablement...

Who should control the firm? What should be the firm's objective function? If contracts are incomplete, then the group of input providers that most needs their interests protected should be allocated control rights to the firm. Existing theories argue that the suppliers of capital are most in...

Who should control the firm? What should be the firm's objective function? If contracts are incomplete, then the group of input providers that most needs their interests protected should be allocated control rights to the firm. Existing theories argue that the suppliers of capital are most in...

This paper studies the role of wealth fluctuations for aggregate consumption in Switzerland. In the long-run, wealth is found to have a significant effect on consumption. In the short-run, by contrast, the effects are less clear as consumption and wealth sometimes deviate persistently from...

Market efficiency remains a contentious topic among financial economists. The theoretical case for efficient markets rests on the notion of risk-free, cost-free arbitrage. In real markets, however, arbitrage is not risk-free or cost-free. In addition, the number of informed arbitrageurs and the...

This article describes the most important corporate governance practices in contemporary Germany. These practices include a prominent role for universal banks, other large financial and non-financial firms, and employees through a system known as codetermination. While some similarities exist,...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) with the stated objective of promoting home ownership by improving the availability of mortgage financing for private households. These enterprises engage in two separate and distinct lines of business: (i) assembling and...