*4.1. Descriptive Statistics*

Table 3 reports descriptive statistics for the sample firms. The absolute value of discretionary accruals has a small mean of 0.03 with a standard deviation of 0.04. The percentage of board independence spans from 0.00 to 1.00, indicating that the sample consists of firms with both 100 percent independent boards and zero percent independent boards. On average the presence of independent shareholder-elected board members is 70 percent. The number of board meetings held by the board of directors is on average 0.95 per quarter4, while the minimum and maximum number of meetings per quarter is respectively 0.00 and 2.205. Further, the descriptive statistics show that the sample consists of firms with both 100 percent share ownership by directors and zero percent share ownership by directors. The mean of share ownership by directors is 63 percent. With respect to the percentage of directors as majority shareholders, the average is 22 percent. The mean of the dummy variable for employee representatives on the board is 0.46, indicating that 46 percent of the sample firms have boards with presence of employee representatives. The dummy variable referring to the presence of an audit committee shows that 92 percent of the sample firms have an audit committee. Finally, the remaining variables included in the model were control variables for different firm characteristics and were not central to our study.

<sup>3</sup> The dummy variables concerning employee representation and audit committee are not considered time-invariant explanatory variables. They will therefore not be absorbed by the intercept in the fixed effects model.

<sup>4</sup> This is equivalent to an average *<sup>e</sup>*0.95 <sup>≈</sup> 2.59 per quarter. <sup>5</sup> This is equivalent to a minimum value of *<sup>e</sup>*0.00 <sup>≈</sup> 1 per quarter and a maximum value of *<sup>e</sup>*2.20 <sup>≈</sup> 9 per quarter.


**Table 3.** Descriptive statistics for the sample firms.
