Corporate Governance and Expected Stock Returns

In the wake of several high profile corporate collapses the discussion about corporate governance has intensified and professional investors have become more conscious of their rights of control in the portfolio companies. Whereas Anglo-American authors have done excellent work on the relationship between corporate governance and firm valuation, there is little empirical evidence on this topic in Germany. But recent works suggest that a stricter legal environment leads to lower expected rates of return in an international cross-section of countries. Andreas Schillhofer investigates whether differences in firm-specific corporate governance also help to explain expected returns in a cross-section of firms within a single jurisdiction. Based on his Corporate Governance Rating (CGR) for German firms, the author documents a positive relationship between the CGR and firm value. In addition, there is strong evidence that expected returns are negatively correlated with the CGR if dividend yields and price-earnings ratios are used as proxies for the cost of capital.