We investigate the effects of mandatory private Country-by-Country Reporting (CbCR) to European tax authorities on multinational firms' corporate real activities and organizational structures. We exploit the threshold-based application of this 2016 disclosure rule to conduct...

Enron's collapse is generally viewed as a morality tale - the natural result of managerial greed, a clueless board, and feckless gatekeepers. But none of these aspects of the story clearly distinguishes Enron from other major firms during the bubble era of the late 90s. This material identifies...

The likelihood and speed of forced CEO turnover - but not voluntary turnover - are positively related to a firm's earnings management. These patterns persist in tests that consider the effects of earnings restatements, regulatory enforcement actions, and the possible endogeneity of CEO turnover...

We examine the effects of mandatory ESG reporting on firms’ corporate performance. Using variation from Sweden’s size-based ESG reporting regulation, which requires medium private firms to start reporting ESG information from 2017 onward, we document that mandatory ESG reporting improves...

Regulators and governance activists are pressuring firms to abolish CEO duality (the Chief Executive Officer is also the Chairman of the Board). However, the literature provides mixed evidence on the relation between CEO duality and firm performance. Using the exogenous shock of the 1989...

We provide the first comprehensive and robust evidence on the relationship between board independence and firm performance in China. We find that independent directors have an overall positive effect on firm operating performance in China. Our findings are robust to a battery of tests, including...

Using five empirical methodologies to account for endogeneity issues, this study investigates the effects of board independence and managerial pay on the performance of 169 Saudi listed firms between 2007 and the end of 2014. Studying board independence and managerial pay utilises the main...

This Chapter in a comparative book on private limited liability companies starts with an illustration of the former success of the Dutch limited liability company (BV). Next it addresses the competitive European legal environment within which the Dutch BV has to operate. The study shows how the...

​This paper examines the governance role of banks in replacement of underperforming CEOs in firms listed on Chinese stock exchanges. Under most circumstances, the findings suggest that the presence of outstanding loans does not increase the probability that a poorly performing CEO will be...

The aim of this study is to explore the previously unresearched outcomes of firms funded through equity crowdfunding, a novel type of entrepreneurial finance. We study the outcomes of a sample of 337 firms funded on equity crowdfunding platforms in Europe between 2009 and 2014. By incorporating...