This paper describes and considers explanations for changes in corporate governance and merger activity in the United States since 1980. Corporate governance in the 1980s was dominated by intense merger activity distinguished by the prevalence of leveraged buyouts (LBOs) and hostility. After a...

We study the interplay between a "one person-one vote" political system and a "one share-one vote" corporate governance regime. The political system sets Pigouvian subsidies, while corporate governance determines firm-specific public good investments. Our analysis highlights a two-way feedback...

Shareholder power in the US grew over recent decades due to a steep rise in concentrated institutional ownership. Using establishment-level data from the US Census Bureau's Longitudinal Business Database for 1982-2015, this paper examines the impact of increases in concentrated institutional...

Passively managed funds have grown to become some of the largest shareholders in publicly traded companies, but there is considerable debate about the effects of this growth on corporate governance. The goal of this paper is to review the literature on the governance implications of passive fund...

This survey provides an overview of theoretical and empirical research on information flows in corporations. It highlights key frictions preventing effective information flows and discusses how organizational structure and corporate governance can alleviate these frictions, focusing on three...

Although corporate finance theory suggests how adverse shocks influence shareholder preferences toward corporate risk-taking and executive compensation, few researchers explore this relationship empirically. We construct a firm-year measure of unexpected shocks to environmental regulatory...

Using textual analysis of earnings conference calls, we quantify firms' supply chain risk and its sources. Our proxy for supply chain risk exhibits large cross-sectional and time-series variation that aligns with reasonable priors and is unprecedently high during the Covid-19 pandemic. In...

One of the most consequential events in any firm's lifetime is a major acquisition. Because of their importance, mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have been an enormous area of research. However, the vast majority of this research and survey papers summarizing this research have focused on...