ESSAYS ON CORPORATE DISTRESS AND BANKRUPTCY

Abstract

First and foremost, I want to thank my supervisor, Finn Kinserdal, for all his help throughout my PhD. Your feedback, advice, guidance, and our many discussions have been invaluable. Special thanks for helping me keep an eye on the goal line over the last four years while enabling my many side-projects – I know it cannot have been easy. I also want to thank my co supervisors Frøystein Gjesdal and Maria Correia for the time spent reading and commenting on my work and for your insightful guidance. It has undoubtably made me a better researcher. To my coauthor Anna Gold, thank you for collaborating with me on our project, your experience has been irreplaceable. The papers in this thesis have benefited greatly from the comments received across various conferences and seminar. Special thanks to Thomas Plenborg for his valuable feedback at my midway evaluation; Aasmund Eilifsen for his constructive comments during the PhD day; Zhifang Zhang and her insightful discussion at the Financial Accounting and Auditing Workshop; and Liwei Zhu, my excellent discussant at the Nordic Accounting Conference. I also appreciate the many comments I received during the doctoral colloquium at the Nordic Accounting Conference in 2018; the parallel sessions at FIBE 2020 and the Nordic Accounting Conference in 2021; and across the many brown bag seminars at NHH. To my esteemed colleagues, many thanks for making work a fantastic place to be. Particular thanks go out to the other PhD students that went through much of this journey with me, Andreas, Dan-Richard, David, Hussnain, Joel, Kasper, Kyrre, Mikael, Saad, and Shrey, you made the last four years both enjoyable and enlightening. Thank you Katarina Kaarbøe for being a supporting PhD coordinator that is always looking out for the wellbeing of the PhD students. My sincerest gratitude also goes out to the administration at the department, ii particularly Maren Dale-Raknes and Ingrid Cecilia Sæthre, you more than made up for my inherent lack of organization. Special thanks to Aksel Mjøs and SNF, the data provided by you has been the basis for the third paper in this thesis as well as multiple other projects. To my parents, refugees that left their old life behind and started over in a new country to give their children the best life possible, I owe everything. I would literally not be here without your sacrifice. Thanks to my little sister, the first student I ever taught. To my friends, thank you for the joy you bring. Finally, I want to give my most heartfelt thanks to Kristine, who will likely be my wife by the time I defend this thesis. You have been a constant source of happiness throughout my PhD, always listening to my problems, ideas, and ramblings. Thank you for being there for me, I am happy I could share this experience with you.