To our knowledge, this is the first paper that investigates the links between trust, the institutional setting (in terms of employment protection legislation (EPL) and investor rights) and studies the impact of all three on economic performance. In line with the previous literature (e.g. Knack...

Japan's corporate sector has, at different times in recent history, been organized according to every major model. Prior to World War II, wealth Japanese families locked in their control over large corporations by organizing them into pyramidal groups, called zaibatsu, similar to structures...

Prior work in emerging markets provides evidence of an association between corporate governance and firm market value (based on the trading prices of minority shares), more limited evidence of a causal relationship, but very little evidence on the channels through which governance may affect...

The primary way in which directors obtain necessary information is by attending board meetings. Bank directors, in particular, are strongly urged to attend meetings by regulators. We investigate whether such pressure is sufficient for bank directors to have good attendance records. Using data on...

We interview 20 executives in the UK who have been members of both PE and PLC boards of relatively large companies. The main difference we find in PE and PLC board modus operandi is in the single-minded value creation focus of PE boards versus governance compliance and risk management focus of...

This paper shows that marriage can function in a similar way as mergers and acquisitions. To set up alliances that would benefit the firms, a controlling family would encourage their children to marry a person from a politically or economically powerful family. To test this hypothesis, we...

When firms compete in the managerial labor market, the choice of corporate governance by a firm affects, and is affected by, the choice of governance by other firms. Firms with weaker governance offer managers more generous compensation packages to incentivize them. This behavior forces firms...

This paper develops and tests a model of how country characteristics, such as legal protections for minority investors and the level of economic and financial development, influence firms' costs and benefits in implementing measures to improve their own governance and transparency. We show that...

This paper provides an overview of the German corporate governance system. We review the governance role of large shareholders, creditors, the product market and the supervisory board. We also discuss the importance of mergers and acquisitions, the market in block trades, and the lack of a...

We investigate the long-term profitability of corporate takeovers of which both the acquiring and target companies are from Continental Europe or the UK. We employ four different measures of operating performance that allow us to overcome a number of measurement limitations of the previous...