This thesis provides empirical evidence on the relation between concentrated ownership and the long term operating performance of acquiring firms. Large shareholders are generally viewed as beneficial monitors of corporate performance but high levels of concentration can lead to potential expropriation from minority shareholders via managerial entrenchment, tunneling, or sub-optimal investment decisions. This problem is potentially greater in firms with separation of voting and ownership rights. This thesis investigates the performance around takeovers in English origin countries other than the US by following the classification of La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer and Vishny (1998). While generally considered similar to the US, these countries vary with respect to ownership concentration and investor protection. This thesis controls a broad set of corporate governance mechanisms including first generation governance measures like CEO positions, board characteristics, and other blockholders. Furthermore, this thesis also examines whether different degrees of second generation governance mechanisms such as anti-director rights, accounting standards, legal enforcement, and extra-legal institutions lead to different levels of M&A performance. In addition, this thesis includes the new legal indexes recently developed by Djankov, La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes and Shleifer (2006); these measures have yet to be examined through empirical research. By using an accounting based methodology, this thesis presents Healy, Palepu and Ruback (1992) abnormal post cash flow return regression-based results and results of a change model (Ghosh 2001). Moreover, this thesis refers to the sample matching techniques in Barber and Lyon (1996) and develops the industry, size, and pre performance benchmark. The principal finding of this thesis is that M&A transactions should improve the long-term financial and operating performance of merging firms to reflect that accounting performance can capture real economic creations. After controlling for well documented governance mechanisms and deal characteristics, the relationship between concentrated ownership and the level and change in operating cash flow returns after takeovers is non-linear. Value creating deals are associated with higher levels of concentration consistent with decreasing agency costs as the large shareholder’s wealth invested in the acquiring firm increases. Further, separation of ownership and voting rights leads to greater value destruction; acquiring firms with controlling CEO make significant improvements in post acquisition performance after controlling pre-performance; and the presence of CEO-Chairman duality and board size are both significantly negatively associated with acquisition operating performance. This thesis also finds, although all acquiring firms are from English origin countries, that the greater investor protection, as measured by the initial anti-director right index in La Porta et al. (1998) and revised anti-director rights index in Djankov et al. (2006) has a positive impact on operating cash flow returns from acquisitions. However, this thesis does not document any differential performance with respect to the extra- legal systems of Dyck and Zingales (2004) and the anti-self-dealing index of Djankov et al. (2006).

Yes / We study the asset pricing implications arising from imperfect investor protection using a new governance measure. This is defined as the product of institutional quality in a country and the proportion of free float shares, which captures the impact of controlling block holders. Using monthly returns of 4756 blue chip firms from 50 international equity markets for 13 years, we show through tests of variants of the augmented-CAPM, that a two factor CAPM augmented with a factor mimicking portfolio based on our new investor protection metric yields the highest explanatory power, especially for markets that exhibit true variation in ownership types.

<p>This thesis examines the influence of investor protection and legal origin on equity market size. Previous studies have shown a relationship between legal origin and equity markets as well as quality of law. We examine whether there are any relationship between stock market capitalization as a percentage of GDP, private property rights, anti director rights and legal origin.</p><p>We use data from 49 countries in our sample that is collected from the World Bank, Heri-tage foundation and La Porta et al. (1998). Our study is based upon a cross-sectional re-gressions and a variance analyzes.</p><p>Our results show that property rights as well as anti director rights have a positive relation-ship to stock market capitalization as a percentage of GDP. We could not find any signifi-cant results in our regressions that stock market capitalization as a percentage of GDP can be explained by legal origin.</p><p>We consider previous conducted studies regarding legal origin to have exaggerated legal origins’ impact on equity markets. Equity markets are more related to the level of develop-ment in countries, no matter legal origin.</p>

This paper investigates determinants of payout levels and payout composition in multinational corporations and domestic corporations and how payout differs between the two, as well as the effect of a country’s legal tradition on payout, on a worldwide sample. My main findings are that multinational corporations’ total payout is slightly lower than domestic corporations’ payout when taking into account a country’s legal tradition affects. No support is found that multinationals and domestic corporations differ in payout composition and payout composition is not changing over time, according to my results. My findings are partly consistent with theories on how ownership structures and agency problems affect payout policy. Still, the puzzle in unsolved.

This thesis examines the influence of investor protection and legal origin on equity market size. Previous studies have shown a relationship between legal origin and equity markets as well as quality of law. We examine whether there are any relationship between stock market capitalization as a percentage of GDP, private property rights, anti director rights and legal origin. We use data from 49 countries in our sample that is collected from the World Bank, Heri-tage foundation and La Porta et al. (1998). Our study is based upon a cross-sectional re-gressions and a variance analyzes. Our results show that property rights as well as anti director rights have a positive relation-ship to stock market capitalization as a percentage of GDP. We could not find any signifi-cant results in our regressions that stock market capitalization as a percentage of GDP can be explained by legal origin. We consider previous conducted studies regarding legal origin to have exaggerated legal origins’ impact on equity markets. Equity markets are more related to the level of develop-ment in countries, no matter legal origin.

This dissertation consists of three essays in international corporate finance. It studies the impact of aggregate conditions and the institutional environment on the behavior of publicly traded firms from a broad sample of countries. In the first essay I argue that when credit constraints are widespread, as may be the case in countries with poor investor protection, we should not necessarily expect small firms´ investment to be more sensitive to monetary contractions or negative aggregate shocks. A simple model of investment with credit constraints shows that for this pattern to occur we need a high enough level of investor protection. The empirical evidence is broadly consistent with the hypothesis. In periods of tight credit conditions, small firms from countries with high creditor protection contract their investment rate more than large firms, while there is no significant difference in the investment contraction of small and large firms in from low creditor protection countries. In the second essay I explore to what extent the effect of legal origin on payout policy, ownership concentration, and valuation has been stable through time. The results suggest that previously established results should be taken with caution, and cast doubts on their strength. In particular, it appears that corporate characteristics are converging across countries, and legal origin is not longer an important determinant of them. In the final essay I study to what extent capital raising in international markets is related to firms´ ability to react to financial shocks. I provide a complete descriptive picture of the main patterns in the use of international financing between 1990 and 2009,study how issuers and non-issuers grow during financial crises, and how their growth is related to the aggregate conditions in the economy and their past financing behavior. Firms that raise capital internationally have a lower correlation with the local GDP growth, and grow more during local financial crises; however this relationship depends on the overall degree of development of the country and is highly dependent on the determinants of the issuance decision. The descriptive analysis show that international capital raising is pervasive in most countries, but the firms doing so differ depending on the development of their country of origin. / text

The study is based on a hypothetical deductive approach. The study applies a quantitative method. The material covers 3926 firm years between 2007–2019. The data studied is obtained from the ASSET4 database. Analysis of data has taken place in the statistics program IBM SPSS. The study is based in corporate governance where the balance between shareholders and stakeholders forms the basis together with the countries' legal origins, i.e. how the legal traditions of different countries affect firms' reporting. To analyze this, two parts are used, a period of voluntary reporting of ESG(2007-2016) and a period covering the regulatory framework implemented in the European Union where mandatory reporting (2017-2019) of non-financial information such as environment and social aspects were introduced for larger firms in 2017. Based on this, a comparison is made whether higher ESG reporting is achieved in the voluntary or mandatory environment.  The study finds evidence that higher ESG reporting is achieved in the mandatory reporting and that the countries' legal differences decrease during the mandatory reporting period. The results show that firms of Scandinavian legal origin have lower ESG reporting and that a concentrated ownership structure leads to a lower ESG reporting.

股市發展是否影響長期經濟成長？本研究以Levine(1991)的內生成長模型作為實證分析之理論依據，股票市場的出現可以消弭流動性風險與生產性風險對個人投資決策的負面影響，進而促進經濟體的成長。我們採取一般成長文獻所最常使用之跨國橫斷面迴歸方式，分析52國1985-1997的平均股市與社會經濟資料，以法系與法律環境做為工具變數，來捕捉股市發展之外生部分對經濟成長的影響。實證結果如下：1.整體而言股市發展的確顯著促進了一國的經濟成長，而影響成長的主要管道則為資本成長。2.對於先進工業化國家而言，我們無法證明其股票市場對於經濟成長具有影響力。3.相反的，對開發中國家而言，股票市場則扮演著重要的角色，不僅促進經濟的成長，對於資本成長與要素生產力成長也有顯著的提升。4.股市與私人儲蓄之間的關係則較為模糊，雖然實證結果隱約透露，對開發中國家而言，發展股市有助於提升私人儲蓄，但我們無法找到統計上顯著強固的證據來加以支持。5.法律因子對於各國股市發展差異所具有的顯著解釋能力給予我們一個啟示：倘若一國的法律對於股東權益的保障越好，執行法律的品質與效率越高，那麼一國將會擁有一個功能完善與發展良好的股票市場，進而對其經濟成長有所助益。 / Do well-developed stock markets promote long-run economic growth? This study evaluates the empirical relationship between the level of stock market development and (i) economic growth, (ii) physical capital accumulation, (iii) total factor productivity, and (iv) private saving rate. By using a pure cross-country instrumental variable estimator to extract the exogenous component of stock market development, we find that (1) stock market development (measured by liquidity) is positively associated with economic growth and physical capital growth; (2) the links between stock market development and both productivity growth and private saving rates are tenuous; (3) for the developing sub-sample, the growth-promoting effect is as strong as with the full sample; for the developed sub-sample, however, this effect is at best very weak; and (4) legal reforms that strengthen shareholder rights and contract enforcement can boost stock market development and therefore accelerate economic growth.

This study aims to investigate how legal origin and cultural values can affect the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the cost of equity. Specifically, common law and civil law countries (legal origin) and countries with high long-term orientation are compared. The research is conducted by using panel data of 5,533 firm-year observations from 1,492 unique firms during a sample period of 2005 through 2013. The findings suggest that firms with better CSR performance will enjoy lower cost of equity. Furthermore, there is strong evidence in support of the corporate governance practices of CSR performance, which leads to cheaper equity financing. In addition, the findings support previous literature that the negative relationship between CSR and the cost of equity is stronger for civil law countries.

Only a handful of studies focuses on the relationship between the legal origin and the content of CSR reports, based on the institutional differences. The previous studies have contradicting results. The paper aims to add to the body of research by analyzing the relationship between the legal origin and its effect on the content of CSR disclosure. To analyse the content a scoring index is developed following Clarkson, Li, Richardson, &amp; Vasvari, 2008 and Ong 2016. 45 CSR reports from 8 different countries are analysed and the research period is 2018 or FY 2019.  The findings suggest that companies from code law countries do publish more in-depth CSR reports. The key findings are that code law countries disclose more employment related information and that institutional regulations lead to better disclosure. Overall, this study extends the discussion on the effects of the legal origin.