Germany’s Corporate Governance Reforms: Has the System Become Flexible Enough?

Jürgen Odenius

No 2008/179, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: This article reviews Germany's corporate governance system and the effectiveness of recent reforms. Since the early 1990s far-reaching reforms have complemented the traditional stakeholder system with important elements of the shareholder system. Instead of taking a view on the superiority of either system, this article raises the important question whether these reforms created sufficient flexibility for the market to optimize its corporate governance structure within well established social and legal norms. It concludes that there is scope for enhancing flexibility in three core areas, relating to (i) internal control mechanisms, especially the flexibility of board structures; (ii) self-dealing; and (iii) external control, particularly take-over activity.

Keywords: WP; firm; shareholder; agency problem; corporate governance system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19
Date: 2008-07-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=22139 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2008/179

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().