In recent years Chinese acquisitions abroad have increased significantly. This paper uses a large dataset on cross-border M&A deals to investigate whether Chinese foreign acquisitions differ from acquisitions coming from other countries. We find that Chinese acquirers buy targets with lower...

The paper analyzes the interplay of product market competition and governance on CEO compensation in Italian listed firms from 2000 to 2011 and tests the impact of the 2007-08 financial crisis on pay-performance sensitivity. We argue that important differences both in the level of compensation...

This paper presents estimates from a latent variables model of the relation between corporate governance and financial performance. We use data on large US corporations to estimate the correlation, conditional on the firms' investment opportunity set, between governance and performance. We find...

Do employees benefit from worker representation on corporate boards? Economists and policymakers are keenly interested in this question – especially lately, as worker representation is widely promoted as an important way to ensure the interests and views of the workers. To investigate this...

This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on executive compensation. We start by presenting data on the level of CEO and other top executive pay over time and across firms, the changing composition of pay; and the strength of executive incentives. We compare pay in U.S. public...

The paper argues that the weakest link principle, which has been widely used as a measure of ultimate owners' control rights, has a number of serious problems. A theoretically more satisfactory method of measuring control rights, based on voting power indices, is proposed, and the different...

Most pre-crisis explanations of the various corporate governance systems have considered the separation between ownership and control to be an advantage of the Anglo-American economies. They have also attributed the failure of other countries to achieve these efficient arrangements to their...

We analyze the optimal ownership, delegation and compensation structures when a manager is hired to run a firm and to gather information on investment projects. The initial owner has two tasks: monitoring the manager and supervising project choice. Optimality would require a large ownership...

In this paper we contribute to the literature on the structure of interlocking directorship networks and to the literature on the relationship between corporate governance and performance. We use a unique dataset made of corporate governance variables related to the board size and interlocking...

Bank intermediated finance has been cited frequently as the preferred means for channeling funds from savers to firms. Germany is the prototypical economy where universal banks allegedly exert substantial influence over firms. Despite frequent assertions about the considerable power of German...