This paper studies the turnover of board of directors members in a sample of 72 companies listed on the Milan Stock Exchange during the period 1988-1996. We investigate whether board members change more frequently when company performance is poor, as the literature suggests, and whether and how...

This paper studies economic effects of the gender composition of corporate boards, employing a new and unique longitudinal dataset of virtually all Russian companies whose shares were traded on the national stock market between 1998 and 2014. Using multiple identification approaches, alternative...

Despite a conventional wisdom that female board members positively impact firm performance, a thorough examination of the research to date reveals no consensus that female board members have either a positive or negative effect on firm performance. We build the largest dataset of Australian...

This paper studies the effect on company performance of appointing non-executive directors that are also executive directors in other firms. The analysis is based on a new panel dataset of UK companies over 2002-2008. Our findings suggest a positive relationship between the presence of these...

This paper provides new evidence on the structure, dynamics and performance effects of corporate boards in publicly traded companies in Russia. It takes advantage of a new and unique longitudinal dataset of virtually all Russian companies whose shares were traded in the RTS/MICEX/MOEX over...

This study investigates boards of (non-executive) directors and whether employee representation has a positive effect on gender diversity on boards. We exploit rich, newly assembled board-director matched panel data for Norway and Germany, which contain unique information on whether a director...

We study the gender pay gap in the labor market for CEOs by analysing 1,174 outsider CEO successions over the past three decades across 18 countries. We find that male and female CEOs receive a similar compensation overall but this masks marked gender differences in the pay structure: namely,...

This paper analyzes the determinants of women on the boards of directors based on a panel sample of all Danish companies in the private sector with more than 50 employees. The share of women on the boards of directors was 12 percent in 2007 and has only slowly increased during the period...

This paper provides empirical evidence consistent with the facts that (1) social networks may strongly affect board composition and (2) social networks may be detrimental to corporate governance. Our empirical investigation relies on a unique dataset on executives and outside directors of...

In 2002, an amendment to UK parliamentary regulations removed restrictions on the participation of members of parliament (MPs) in parliamentary proceedings related to their corporate interests. Using this amendment as a quasi-natural experiment, we demonstrate gains in firm value and...