Forced Board Changes: Evidence from Norway

34 Pages Posted: 25 Mar 2011 Last revised: 29 Aug 2011

See all articles by Knut Nygaard

Knut Nygaard

Oslo Business School at Oslo Metropolitan University

Date Written: March 9, 2011

Abstract

The recently introduced gender quota on Norwegian corporate boards dramatically increased the share of female directors.This reform offers a natural experiment to investigate changes in corporate governance from forced increases in gender diversity, and whether these changes in turn impact firm performance.I find that investors anticipate the new directors to be more effective in firms with less information asymmetry between insiders of the firm and outsiders. Firms with low information asymmetry experience positive and significant cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) at the introduction of the quota, whereas firms with high information asymmetry show negative but insignificant CAR.

Keywords: Natural experiment, Corporate governance

JEL Classification: G34

Suggested Citation

Nygaard, Knut, Forced Board Changes: Evidence from Norway (March 9, 2011). NHH Dept. of Economics Discussion Paper No. 5/2011, 24th Australasian Finance and Banking Conference 2011 Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1793227 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1793227

Knut Nygaard (Contact Author)

Oslo Business School at Oslo Metropolitan University ( email )

Pilestredet 35
Oslo, 0167
Norway

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
1,748
Abstract Views
10,989
Rank
20,947
PlumX Metrics