Persistence of Profits and the Systematic Search for Knowledge
This thesis consists of five separate essays and an introductory chapter, The essays can be read independently from each other, but they are all in the field of corporate governance and investment performance. Specifically, the focus is on the role of institutional owners in the conflict between controlling shareholders and minority owners. The essays mainly contribute to the empirical literature on corporate governance and investment performance. In four of the five essays, panel data methods are used in the empirical investigation. The first essay investigates time and industry specific factors in the evaluation of firms’ investment performance, measured by marginal q. Significant differences in valuation is found between firms, depending on the market sentiments and industry affiliation. The second essay focuses on the role of institutional owners in relation to firms’ investment performance. Institutional owners are found to have a positive influence on firms’ investment performance. By studying a large panel of Swedish listed firms the essay also provides evidence on the relationship between control enhancing mechanism, such as vote-differentiated shares, and investment performance. The third essay looks at the role of institutional owners from the perspective of dividend policy. It is shown that institutional owners demand higher dividends to compensate for aggravated agency conflicts due to vote-differentiated shares. The fourth essay investigates the performance of European firms from a long run perspective. Firm profits converge over time, but this convergence is incomplete. Investment in R&D is put forward as an explanation for persistent profits above the norm. The fifth and last essay looks at individual mutual funds and specifically how to measure risk-adjusted performance. The results show that Swedish bond funds underperform their benchmark, even when risk-adjusted to the same level of risk.