My primary area of professional interest is corporate finance, where I have worked mostly with capital budgeting, valuation effects of taxation, seasoned equity offerings, dividend policy, and corporate governance.
My research is published in outlets like the Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Review of Finance, Journal of Corporate Finance, European Finance Review, Journal of Banking and Finance, European Financial Management, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, International Review of Law and Economics, Economics Letters, Decision Sciences, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Economic Psychology, and Energy Economics.
Corporate governance is currently the area I work the most with. I am the founding director of the Centre for Corporate Governance Research (CCGR).
News
- We presented the new paper Shareholder illiquidity and firm behavior: Financial and real effects of the personal wealth tax in private firms (with Janis Berzins and Bogdan Stacescu) at the annual meeting of the Western Finance Association (WFA) on June 21, 2020.
- The textbook Finans: Innføring i investering og finansiering (with Per Ivar Gjærum) was published by Fagbokforlaget in January 2020. The text is an introduction to corporate finance.
- I retired on September 1, 2019. I plan to complete my ongoing BI projects, which are three research papers and one text book revision. Professor Charlotte Ostergaard takes over the directorship of the CCGR.
- The paper Dividends and taxes: The moderating role of agency conflicts (with Janis Berzins and Bogdan Stacescu) was accepted for publication at the Journal of Corporate Finance in July 2019 (vol. 58, 2019, pp. 583-604).
- The CCGR hosted the Third BI Conference on Corporate Governance on May 24, 2019. Eight leading scholars presented a new working paper.
- The paper When does the family govern the family firm? (with Bogdan Stacescu, Line Almli, and Kathrine Søndergaard) was accepted for publication at the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis in July 2018 (vol. 54, issue 5, 2019, pp. 2085-2117).
- I received BI’s Award for Research Communication and Impact on Society on January 18, 2018.
- The paper Modeling the response to exogenous shocks: The capital uplift rate in petroleum taxation (with Magnus Berg and Erik Vassnes) was published in Energy Economics in 2018 (vol. 69, pp. 442-455).
- The paper Shareholder conflicts and dividends (with Janis Berzins and Bogdan Stacescu) was published in Review of Finance in 2018 (vol. 22, pp. 1807-1840).
- The textbook Finans: Teori og praksis (with Dag Michalsen and Øyvind Norli) was published by Fagbokforlaget in August 2017. The topic is corporate finance at the intermediate level.
- The paper Mandatory gender balance and board independence (with Siv Staubo), which was published in European Financial Management in 2016 ( vol. 11-1, pp. 3–30), received the Best Paper Award at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the EFMA.
Recent publications
- Solstrøm fra boligtak er ofte godt for både klima og økonomi, men ikke i dagens Norge, with Per Ivar Gjærum and Torkel Hasle, Samfunnsøkonomen, 5, 2021, pp. 33-51.
- Dividends and taxes: The moderating role of agency conflicts, with Janis Berzins and Bogdan Stacescu, Journal of Corporate Finance 58, 2019, pp. 583-604.
- When does the family govern the family firm?, with Bogdan Stacescu, Line Almli, and Kathrine Søndergaard, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 54, issue 5, 2019, pp. 2085-2117.
- Modeling the response to exogenous shocks: The capital uplift rate in petroleum taxation, with Magnus Berg and Erik Vassnes, Energy Economics 69, 2018, pp. 442-455.
- Shareholder conflicts and dividends, with Janis Berzins and Bogdan Stacescu, Review of Finance 22, 2018, pp. 1807-1840.
- Mandatory gender balance and board independence, with Siv Staubo, European Financial Management, 2016, vol. 11-1, pp. 3-30.
- Does mandatory gender balance work? Changing organizational form to avoid board upheaval, with Siv Staubo, Journal of Corporate Finance 28, 2014, pp. 152–168.
- Stakeholder rights and economic performance: The profitability of non-profits, with Morten G. Josefsen, Journal of Banking and Finance 37, 2013, pp. 4073-4086.
Key publications
- When does the family govern the family firm?, with Bogdan Stacescu, Line Almli, and Kathrine Søndergaard, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 54, issue 5, 2019, pp. 2085-2117.
- Shareholder conflicts and dividends, with Janis Berzins and Bogdan Stacescu, Review of Finance 22, 2018, pp. 1807-1840.
- The economics of minority freezeouts: Evidence from the courtroom, with Nils Erik Krosvik, International Review of Law and Economics 36, 2013, pp. 48-58.
- The agent's ethics in the principal-agent model, Journal of Business Ethics 17, 1998, pp. 745-755.
- Why underwrite rights offerings? Some new evidence, with B. Espen Eckbo and Dag Michalsen. Journal of Financial Economics 46, 1997, pp. 223-261.
- Theory development processes in the social sciences: The case of stochastic choice theory. Journal of Economic Psychology 11, no. 1, 1990, pp. 1-34.
- Capital budgeting with unspecified discount rates, with Terje Hansen, Scandinavian Journal of Economics 82, no. 1, 1980, pp. 45-58.
- Consistent rankings based on total and differential amounts under uncertainty, with Steinar Ekern, Decision Sciences 10, no. 4, 1979, pp. 519-526.
Recent working papers
- The Family Behind the Family Firm Premium: Small Agency Conflicts and Large Financial Constraints, with Janis Berzins and Bogdan Stacescu, May, 2023.
- Illiquid owners and firm behavior: Financial and real effects of the personal wealth tax in private firms, with Janis Berzins and Bogdan Stacescu, February, 2022.
- The persistent ownership structure of private firms, with Diana‐Cristina Iancu, Georgiana Radulescu and R. Øystein Strøm, September, 2020.
- The effect of shareholder turnout on voting rights and separation, with Sebastian Christophersen and Simen Lerfaldet, March, 2020.
- The governance and finance of Norwegian family firms: Main characteristics of the population, with Janis Berzins and Bogdan Stacescu, May, 2018.