News

October 2011: Paper accepter for publivation in Prosa
We are happy to announce that the paper "Intens og kompakt" has been accepted for publication in Prosa.
May 2011: Paper accepted for publication in Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice:
We are happy to announce that the paper "A Strategic Deviance Perspective on the Franchise Form of Organizing" has been accepted for publication in Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice.
April 2011: New working papers:
Initial Public Offering or Initial Private Placement?:
This paper studies the choice between an auction and a negotiation when selling a large fraction of a company. Using detailed data on ownership structure in 123 public offerings and 88 negotiated private placements, we show that negotiated private placements are much more common when there are significant private benefits of control. This finding supports the idea that a negotiated transaction allow the seller to extract more of the gains from trade when the gains from trade include private benefits.

Corporate Governance Before There Was Corporate Law:
This paper study 79 sets of bylaw provisions adopted by Norwegian corporations in a free contracting environment before Norway got its first corporate law. The firms in the sample are publicly traded companies in the period 1900-1910. We document substantial protections to minority shareholders against expropriation by insiders and observe considerable heterogeneity in the investor protections stipulated in the contracts with regards to board structure, director responsibilities and remuneration, disclosure of company information, and shareholder voting rights, among others.
January 2011: New working papers:
Laddering in Initial Public Offering Allocations:
This paper study how Tying Initial Public Offering (IPO) allocations of common stock to after-listing purchases in the IPO shares, a process referred to as IPO laddering, has resulted in large-scale investigations of the major investment banks by the SEC and the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD). With a new and unique dataset of 16,593 IPO allocations on the Oslo Stock Exchange (OSE), we confirm the SECs suspicion that IPO allocations are dependent on after-listing trading.

The Marginal Value of Cash, Cash Flow Sensitivities, and Bank-Finance Shocks in Nonlisted Firms:
This paper study how external financing costs affect the cash flow trade-offs made by nonlisted firms. The objective is two-fold: First, understand how nonlisted firms typically trade off financial, real, and distributive allocations; that is, how do they finance fluctuations in their cash flow. Little is known about corporate decision making in closely-held firms which do not have access to public equity and debt markets. Second, how shocks to the cost of external finance affect firms' cash flow trade-offset to what extent do they substitute between external and internal finance and to what extent do dividends and investments adjust?
December 2010: Paper accepted for publication in Journal of Business Finance & Accounting
We are happy to announce that the paper "Governance and Politics: Regulating Independence and Diversity in the Board Room" has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Business Finance & Accounting.
September 2010: Working paper accepted for publication in Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice
We are happy to announce that the CCGR working paper The Dual-Agency Problem Reconsidered - A Strategic Deviance Perspective on the Franchise Form of Organizing has been accepted for publication in the Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice.
March 2010: New working papers:
Agency Conflicts and Auditing in Private Firms:
This paper provide a detailed examination of auditor effort in various agency settings of privately held firms. Specifically, they measure the relation between abnormal audit fees and firm-level characteristics related to ultimate ownership and family relationships among shareholders, CEOs, and board members. Their results contribute to understanding agency costs for an economically important subset of firms (i.e., private companies) that have received limited attention in the literature.

The Dual-Agency Problem Reconsidered - A Strategic Deviance Perspective on the Franchise Form of Organizing:
This paper propose that a franchisor cannot assess and control opportunism without comparative information from plural form contractual arrangements provided by both franchisee relationships and operating its own units. Moving beyond dyadic perspectives, their strategic deviance model suggests why franchisors accept deviant behavior that results from vertical and horizontal agency problems.
December 2009: New journal publication:
The paper "Unoterte aksjeselskaper er viktige, uutforskede og spesielle" written by Janis Berzins and Øyvind Bøhren is published in "Praktisk Økonomi og Finans, nr. 2, 2009".
July 3 2009: Working paper accepted for publication in Accounting Review
We are happy to announce that the CCGR working paper "Auditor independence in a private firm and low litigation risk setting" has been accepted for publication in the Accounting Review. The authors Ole-Kristian Hope and John Christian Langli are the first to receive the CCGR grant of NOK 100.000 for publication in an A journal.
July 3 2009: Working paper - Liquidity and Shareholder Activism
This paper documents that stock liquidity improves shareholders’ incentive to monitor management. Using a hand-collected sample of contested proxy solicitations and shareholder proposals as occurrences of shareholder activism, they find that poor firm performance increases the probability of shareholder activism and that this relationship is much stronger for firms with liquid stock than for other firms. The conclusion that liquidity improves monitoring is robust to different measures of firm performance and liquidity. They also document that target shareholders earn positive abnormal returns on the announcement date of activism and conclude that shareholder activism creates shareholder value.

May 15 2009: The 4th CCGR workshop
Two ongoing CCGR projects and seven project plans were presented and discussed. Info about the project types, titles, team leaders, team members, and project outlines, can be found under the "Projects" tab.
March 9 2009: Eight new projects
The CCGR solicited proposals for research projects in November 2008. Eight proposals successfully passed the evaluation, and will have startup dates during spring 2009.
October 1 2008: Research Report - Corporate finance and governance in firms with limited liability: Basic characteristics
This study analyzes a wide range of corporate finance and governance characteristics in all active Norwegian firms with limited liability, including about 77,000 nonlisted (private) firms and 135 listed (public) firms per year, over the period 1994-2005. The unexplored nature of nonlisted firms makes us address a large set of characteristics, and to focus more on describing overall patterns in the data rather than making elaborate tests of behavioral hypotheses.
June 23 2008: Working Paper - Risk management with cash and insurance in non-listed firms
This study analyzes corporate risk management with property insurance in small and medium sized firms that are privately held. The paper documents that the use of insurance relates positively to CEO salary and negatively to CEO ownership and ownership concentration.
May 22-24 2008: Conference on the Corporate finance and governance of privately held firms
Non-listed firms probably account for the largest portion of value creation and employment in virtually any country around the world. These firms are likely to evolve and utilize governance structures and to face specific financing challenges that are very different from those of publicly traded corporations. The objective of this international conference is to take some initial steps toward a better understanding of how privately held firms are governed and financed.
January 11 2008: The 3rd CCGR workshop
Seven teams presented and discussed their findings after about 15 months of research activity. Most of the teams are now close to having a working paper ready.
Nov 29 2007: Working Paper - Auditor independence in a private firm setting
Although private firms predominate in the economy worldwide, there has been little, if any, prior research on auditor independence in a private firm setting. Ole-Kristian Hope and John Christian Langli investigate whether auditors are willing to sacrifice their independence in exchange for retaining clients that pay abnormally large fees for audit and/or non-audit services.

Media exposure: Aftenposten, Den norske Revisorforening, NSM BI

May 15 2007: The 2nd CCGR workshop
Seven research teams presented and discussed the preliminary findings after half a year of research activity.
September 22 2006: The 1st CCGR workshop
The objective of this kickoff event was to encourage cooperation and mutual support across the research teams. Each team presented its research plan, which was commented upon by a discussant and the general audience.
August 2006 : Financial support from NFR
Triggered by a private gift to fund research projects and a chaired professorship in corporate governance, the Research Council of Norway (NFR) granted NOK 2.5 to the CCGR (socalled Gaveforsterking).
July 2006: Project funding decision
The CCGR granted financial support to three seed projects and ten regular projects.
May 2006: Canica grant
Canica AS decided to support the research activities of the CCGR by a NOK 5 mill. grant.
April 2006: Invitation for research proposals
The CCGR announced its intention to fund promising research in corporate governance by specifying key characteristics of a successful project description

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