This dissertation deals with corporate governance, legal origin and firm performance with a focus mainly on Asia. The dissertation consists of four individual papers and an introductory chapter. All papers can be read individually but share a common theme in corporate governance and investments. The main region of interest is Asia due to its special characteristics of ownership structures and governance. However, comparative studies of Asia and Europe as well as global outlooks are included in the dissertation too. The papers contribute to research by studying effects on investment performance, firm performance, capital allocation and capital structure from legal traditions, institutional indicators and ownership type.

The first paper focuses on family ownership which is found to affect firm performance negatively when using measures of firm valuation and returns, but investment performance positively when measured by marginal q. This suggest that family owned firms may be better at avoiding bad investments but at the same time have lower market valuation and returns to capital compared to firms with other owners.

The second paper investigates investment performance and firm size in terms of number of employees in 58 countries around the world. It is found that initial increase of staff size tend to positively affect investment performance overall, but excessive employment has a negative impact on investment performance.

The third paper studies the capital allocation in India after their economic reforms in the 1990s. It is found that allocation of capital has been slow to respond to reforms and firms face significant costs in adjusting their capital stock, leading to inefficient capital allocation.

The fourth paper deals with firm capital structure in 24 Asian and European countries. Both financial market indicators of maturity and firm specific characteristics influence the leverage of firms. Financial market maturity measures have a negative effect on debt levels as do family ownership of firms.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the efficiency of capital allocation, across levels of ownership, in the aftermath of pro-market reforms in India.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper measures investment efficiency using the accelerator principle and examines the effect of ownership type on capital allocation.

Findings – No significant improvement in capital allocation during the period studied is found. The findings suggest firms face significant costs in adjusting their capital stock.

Originality/value – The paper uses unique data to estimate the elasticity of capital with respect to output.

This paper investigates the impact of legal tradition and firm size on investment performance for firms in 16 European countries. Europe as a region is of special interest since the legal systems differs widely. Anglo Saxon, German, French as well as Scandinavian variants of legal systems can be found in Europe. Previous studies suggest that minority shareholders enjoy a higher degree of property rights protection in common law (Anglo Saxon) countries compared to civil law (French, German and Scandinavian) countries. The cost of governance as a function of firm size is examined. We also look at expropriation of minority shareholders as a result of large organizations and hierarchies.This study differs from earlier studies by concentrating on the firm size and its effects on investment performance and by connecting it to the legal origin in each of the 16 European countries included in the study. For civil law countries we find, as expected, a negative relation between firm size and performance while there is no relation for common law countries. For individual countries, the effect of firm size and legal origin on investment performance is however ambiguous.

Previous studies have shown that differences in corporate governance systems, traditions, and both formal and informal institutions appear to correlate with firm performance. It has been suggested that Scandinavia and South East Asia have similar ownership structures with vote differential shares, pyramids and strong family ownership. However, the regions have different legal traditions and hence formal institutions, and also informal institutions. This paper presents a detailed overview of firm performance for a sample of listed firms in Scandinavia (represented by Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) and South East Asia (represented by Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea). Firm performance is estimated using both the Marginal q-approach and the Tobin’s Q on an unbalanced dataset from 1998 to 2006.

Comparative literature in corporate governance typically separate between countries with different legal origin, institutions and corporate traditions. However, the importance of informal institutions and their effects on the economic development, firm performance and corporate governance should not be neglected. Informal institutions have been claimed to be of extra importance foremost Asia.

This paper comprise of a general discussion on legal origin and formal and informal institutions. This discussion is then connected to recent studies on corporate governance issues in Asia. The results are mixed, but a general picture of corporate governance in Asia is presented. Foremost formal institutions and legislations seems to have their intended effect on the economy in general.

However, differences between the countries become clear and the influence of informal institutions seems to differ substantially between the Asian countries. The impact of formal institutions in contrast to informal institutions is important since the economical effects for many of the developing countries in the region may be imperative.

This paper investigates the impact of legal tradition and ownership on investment performance in large European listed firms. Europe is of special interest in this sense since the legal systems differs widely. Anglo Saxon, Scandinavian, German as well as French variants of legal systems can be found in representative forms in a concentrated geographical area. It is also interesting as the dispersed ownership pattern discussed and theoretized in much of the corporate governance literature is only common in Anglo Saxon countries. Most countries show a rather concentrated ownership of listed firms.

This study differs from earlier studies by concentrating on large listed firms. These are firms in which shareholder protection should be most important for handling typical corporate governance problems. The results show in line with the expectations that performance is lower in these large firms. Somewhat unexpectedly the results also indicate that the Anglo Saxon legal system is no guarantee for good governance and importance. A possible explanation is that shareholder protection changes over time in a fashion that does not always follows legal origin demarcations.

The government of India initiated pro-market reforms in the 1990s, after almost five decades of socialist planning. These and subsequent policy reforms are credited as the drivers of India’s radical economic transformation. Prior to reforms, private investment was strictly regulated and restricted to limited sectors. There have since been numerous changes in sectors important for investment, such as the bank sector, which affects outcomes of firm-level strategic decision making and investment behavior. By most estimates, India’s economy will continue to grow rapidly. The purpose of this paper is to investigate changes in investment behavior from the introduction of reforms to current conditions. Reforms changed several institutional frameworks for firm operations, allowing firms to pursue more competitive strategies. Given the importance of ownership in determining firm efficiency and access to capital, we examine the effect of ownership type, and also control for industry differences in capital allocation. We compute a measure of investment efficiency derived from the accelerator principle: Elasticity of capital with respect to output. We find that the allocation of capital has been slow to respond to reforms, indicating similar pace of firm responses. The findings suggest that firms face significant costs in adjusting their capital stock, which in turn leads to inefficient capital allocation. Surprisingly, we find no significant improvement over the 1991-2006 time period.