Syfte: CSR är idag ett väl använt och diskuterat begrepp. Även företagsskatt är ett omdiskuterat ämne där många av de metoder som företag använder sig av för att kraftigt minska skatten kan ifrågasättas. Då skatt kan ses som ett sätt att bidra till samhället i stort har studier av CSR, som är ett socialt ansvarstagande, blivit intressant att studera i förhållande till skatt. Motstridiga studier leder dock till att ett behov finns att undersöka faktorer som kan påverka förhållandet. Ägarstruktur kan ha en påverkan på hur arbetet med företags sociala ansvarstagande ser ut samt hur skatteaggressivt det är. Den föreliggande studien undersöker därför om insiderägande är en faktor som har en modererande effekt på förhållandet mellan CSR och skatteaggressivitet. Metod: Studien utgår från en positivistisk forskningsfilosofi med en hypotetisk-deduktiv ansats. Studien har en kvantitativ strategi och en longitudinell design som genomförts med data över tio år från 273 publika europeiska företag, för åren 2008–2017. I studien har sekundärdata använts inhämtad från databasen Thomson Reuters Eikon. Insamlat datamaterial har analyserats i statistikprogrammet SPSS. Resultat & slutsats: Resultaten visar att insiderägande har en modererande effekt på sambandet mellan CSR och skatt. Genom undersökningen framkommer det att det är nivån av insiderägande som bestämmer riktningen på förhållandet mellan CSR och skatteaggressivitet. Slutsatsen som kan nås är att ägarstruktur är en faktor som bör tas i beaktning vid studier av sambandet mellan skatt och CSR. Examensarbetets bidrag: Undersökningen lämnar ett unikt bidrag till redovisningsforskningen då den är den enda att studera ägarstrukturens påverkan på CSR och skatteaggressivitet genom att titta på insiderägande. Studien lämnar också ett praktiskt bidrag till myndigheter och organisationer om de ägarstrukturer som kan påverka företags inställning till hållbarhetsredovisning och skattebeteende. Utöver detta breddas den empiriska forskningen på europeiska bolag och sambandet mellan CSR och skatt. Förslag till fortsatt forskning: Förslag till vidare forskning ges i form av studier på vilken typ av aktier som innehas av insiders, det vill säga om innehavet innebär röststarka aktier eller inte. Förslag ges också till att studera olika grupper av insiders då det kan finnas skillnader inom en bred definition av insiders i huruvida personen i stor utsträckning associeras med företaget. Det ges även förslag på att inte mäta CSR som ett samlat begrepp utan istället studera dimensionerna som separata beroende variabler då det kan finnas skillnader som inte upptäcks då begreppet mäts som en helhet. / Aim: CSR is an often-used term and a well-discussed topic. Corporate tax is also an often debated subject where many of the methods used by companies to greatly reduce tax can be questioned. Since tax can be seen as a way to contribute to society at large, studies of CSR, which is a way for companies to take social responsibility, have become interesting to study in relation to tax. Contradicting studies, however, lead to the need to investigate factors that may affect the relationship. Ownership structure can have an impact on corporate social responsibility and how tax-aggressive a company is. This study therefore investigates whether insider ownership is a factor that has a moderating effect on the relationship between CSR and tax aggressiveness. Method: The study is based on a positivistic research philosophy with a hypothetical-deductive approach. The study has a quantitative strategy and a longitudinal design using ten-year data of 273 public European companies, for the years 2008-2017. In the study, secondary data has been used retrieved from the Thomson Reuters Eikon database. Collected data has been analyzed in the statistical program SPSS. Result & Conclusions: The results show that insider ownership has a moderating effect on the relationship between CSR and tax. This study shows that it is the level of insider ownership that determines the direction of the relationship between CSR and tax aggressiveness. The conclusion that can be reached is that ownership structure is a factor that should be taken into account in studies examining the relationship between tax and CSR. Contribution of the thesis: This study provides a unique contribution to the field of accounting research as it is the only one to study the impact of ownership structure on CSR and tax aggressiveness by examining insider ownership. The study also provides a practical contribution to government institutions and organizations about the ownership structures that can affect companies’ attitude towards sustainability reporting and tax behavior. In addition to this, empirical research on European companies and the relationship between CSR and tax are broadened. Suggestions for future research: Further research is needed in the form of studies on the type of shares held by insiders, i.e. if the holding contains voting shares or not. Further research is also needed to study different groups of insiders as there may be differences within a broad definition of insiders as to whether the person is largely associated with the company or not. In addition, there are also suggestions for more research that does not measure CSR as one variable. By studying the dimensions that make up CSR as separate variables there may be differences that are not detected when it is measured as one variable.

The dissertation consists of two chapters on measuring firms technological profile. Patent data can be grouped into two primary generations. The first generation lead by the work of Schmookler (1966), Scherer (1982), and Griliches (1984), and the second generation led by Trajtenberg, Jaffe, and Henderson (1997) and Kogan et al. (2016). When combined, both generations data spans from nearly 1926-2010 and has made a meaningful impact on innovation research. In the first chapter, I propose a third generation of patent data. The third generation of patent data has two distinct contributions. First, it extends patent-firm ownership information beyond 2010 to 2016. The new dataset uses the established connections of previous datasets and builds on that information with additional data on firm names gathered from EDGAR. Second, it takes advantage of the information contained in the text of patents using text analysis. Using text analysis allows for greater flexibility over traditional measures. The second chapter investigates how ownership structure affects firm value. The previous literature has assumed more innovation is better, meaning the more innovation a business creates; the better off it is in the long-run. However, not all innovations are created equal. We contribute to the literature by investigating how institutional investors change future innovation, not in quantity, but diversity. Using several unique measures of technological diversification created from firm-level patent data, we show that institutional investors increase the focus on a firm’s future innovation. Our results are robust to the classification scheme. Ultimately, our results indicate institutional investors create value by encouraging firms to build on prior knowledge.

<p>The subject for this paper is the Class Action against Skandia Association, a civil organization formed in 2003 with the aim of claiming compensation for some 1.2 million life insurance customers. The background to its formation was one of the largest financial scandals in Sweden in recent times, involving a number of questionable affairs within the insurance corporation Skandia and its subsidiaries, most notably the life insurance company Skandia Liv. The interests of both the stake- and stockholders of the company seem, in certain ways, to have been grossly misrepresented. The scandal, as well as the reaction it spawned, pose a number of questions. In this study, we focus on two: a possible, and in many ways apparent crisis in the representation of interests in Swedish society, and the role of civil society in upholding the balance between these interests.</p><p>We argue that what is often held to be the ”greed” or ”immorality” of individuals in scandals such as Skandia is, to a great extent, a mere reflection of the ”rational” underpinnings of modern-day capitalism.</p><p>We find that trust has been a key mechanism of control in the relationships between consumers and agents in pension and life insurance markets, and that ”the Swedish model” that distinguished post-WWII Swedish society was a model heavily based on trust towards existing models of bureaucratic governance. Furthermore, the increase in social and technical complexity of the systems and relationships necessary of our individual and collective welfare, as well as the growing anonymity of the people we depend on, seem to have resulted in a gap that cannot be bridged without resorting to trust.</p><p>We also find that elements of the Skandia scandal mirror a larger societal development in which the balance between interests has been disrupted, causing severe breaches of trust. Over time, and as a result of a largely global interplay between power and discourse, the Swedish model has undergone a considerable transition, gradually transforming elements of the underlying institutional foundations of both the market and the state.</p><p>Such transitions, and the herein observed inability of both market and state to cope with them while maintaining the balance between interests of society as a whole, make us believe that the importance of a vital civil society cannot be understated. The Class Action against Skandia Association is a testament to its potential.</p>

No description available.

Persistence of stock returns is an extensively studied and discussed theme in the analysis of financial markets. Antipersistence is usually attributed to volatilities. However, not only volatilities but also stock returns can exhibit antipersistence. Antipersistent noise has a somewhat rougher appearance than Gaussian noise. Heuristically spoken, price movements are more likely followed by movements in the opposite direction than in the same direction. The pertaining integrated process exhibits a smaller range – prices seem to stay in the vicinity of the initial value. We apply a widely used test based upon the modified R/S-Method by Lo [1991] to daily returns of 21 German stocks from 1960 to 2008. Combining this test with the concept of moving windows by Carbone et al. [2004], we are able to determine periods of antipersistence for some of the series under examination. Our results suggest that antipersistence can be found for stocks and periods where extraordinary corporate actions such as mergers & acquisitions or financial distress are present. These effects should be properly accounted for when choosing and designing models for inference.

No description available.

The subject for this paper is the Class Action against Skandia Association, a civil organization formed in 2003 with the aim of claiming compensation for some 1.2 million life insurance customers. The background to its formation was one of the largest financial scandals in Sweden in recent times, involving a number of questionable affairs within the insurance corporation Skandia and its subsidiaries, most notably the life insurance company Skandia Liv. The interests of both the stake- and stockholders of the company seem, in certain ways, to have been grossly misrepresented. The scandal, as well as the reaction it spawned, pose a number of questions. In this study, we focus on two: a possible, and in many ways apparent crisis in the representation of interests in Swedish society, and the role of civil society in upholding the balance between these interests. We argue that what is often held to be the ”greed” or ”immorality” of individuals in scandals such as Skandia is, to a great extent, a mere reflection of the ”rational” underpinnings of modern-day capitalism. We find that trust has been a key mechanism of control in the relationships between consumers and agents in pension and life insurance markets, and that ”the Swedish model” that distinguished post-WWII Swedish society was a model heavily based on trust towards existing models of bureaucratic governance. Furthermore, the increase in social and technical complexity of the systems and relationships necessary of our individual and collective welfare, as well as the growing anonymity of the people we depend on, seem to have resulted in a gap that cannot be bridged without resorting to trust. We also find that elements of the Skandia scandal mirror a larger societal development in which the balance between interests has been disrupted, causing severe breaches of trust. Over time, and as a result of a largely global interplay between power and discourse, the Swedish model has undergone a considerable transition, gradually transforming elements of the underlying institutional foundations of both the market and the state. Such transitions, and the herein observed inability of both market and state to cope with them while maintaining the balance between interests of society as a whole, make us believe that the importance of a vital civil society cannot be understated. The Class Action against Skandia Association is a testament to its potential.

Background: During the past ten years an increasing trend of international representation in Swedish boards, referred to as board internationalization, has occured. Figures show that in 1994 foreign board members held 3,4% (Sundin &amp; Sundqvist, 1995) of the seats in Swedish companies boards, today that figure is 14,2% (Fristedt &amp; Sundqvist, 2005). This trend seems to continue as the nominations of this year is streaming in. Although this trend occurs Swedish business press is questioning why not more foreign directors are being appointed members to board (Almgren, 2006). Fahim (2005) also questions this and argues that companies need to realise that there is a profitability perspective on the subject of diversity. In many of the large Swedish companies the absence of foreign directors is noticed, but there is a few in the forefront which have appointed foreign directors. The reasons for internationalizing a board can be different and it interesting to investigate how forefront companies discuss internationalization in general and which reasons in particular that drives board internationalization. Purpose: The thesis' purpose is to investigate the main rational for board internationalization. Frame of reference: In the frame of reference, four possible influences on the internationalization of the board is presented, in order to be discussed and compared to the empirical findings; corporate governance, ownership structure, stakeholder pressure, and competitive advantage. Method: In order to fulfill the purpose, a qualitative research method is chosen, based on in-depth interviews. The sample consists of ten interviews with chairmen of Swedish boards within companies that are represented by at least one foreign board member. Conclusion: We have concluded that the main rational of board internationalization is the search for competitive advantage, which is believed to be created by a board with diverse competences and networks. Regarding ownership structure, foreign private owners are the only ones that are influencing the internationalization. Both the corporate governance development and the stakeholder pressure are identified in the empirical findings, but not believed to be an influence of internationalization.

The aim of this study is to test the audit fee determinants for companies listed on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm Stock Exchange and to examine whether the audit fee determinants diverge for ownership structures. By testing the audit fee determinants in a Swedish setting the study contributes to the research body in two ways; by testing a previously sparsely researched setting and examining the monitoring need for different ownership structures. The results indicate that audit fees are explained to a large extent by accounting complexities, business complexities and assurance.  The results also suggest that ownership structure does not have a large effect on the monitoring need.  Altogether the results provide further evidence on audit fee determinants whilst adding initial insight into the area of audit fee determinants for ownership structures.

I analyze the impact that a Major League Baseball (MLB) team’s ownership structure has on its financial and on-the-field efficiency. Previous work has shown that ownership structure does have an impact on firm efficiency. In MLB, a team under the management of a corporate owner could have access to potential cost and revenue synergies that would otherwise be unavailable to a team with a private owner. These synergies should increase the financial efficiencies of corporately owned teams, which should translate to success on the field, as measured by on-the-field efficiency.