Relation between board composition and firm performance: Empirical evidence from Nordics

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

URL

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

School of Business | Bachelor's thesis

Date

2019

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Rahoitus

Language

en

Pages

24+4

Series

Abstract

I study the relationship between the composition of board of directors and company performance on two measures: Tobin’s Q and ROA. Using a panel data sample of more than 400 Finnish, Danish and Swedish companies over the years 2012-2018, I employ pooled OLS estimator and fixed effects regressions using firm and year fixed effects. I find significant evidence supporting my hypothesis that board size has a negative correlation with firm performance, measured with Tobin’s Q. On the contrary, I find only a little significance between board size and ROA. I also find a weak significant relation between the number of foreign directors and firm value. These findings are robust to foreseeable covariates, multicollinearity, heteroscedasticity, and omitted variables. These results contribute to the existing literature on corporate governance by providing robust evidence on a unique data set of Nordic countries in post-financial crisis markets.

Description

Thesis advisor

Ungeheuer, Michael

Keywords

board of directors, board composition, board size, foreign directors, corporate governance, firm performance

Other note

Citation