Small closely held corporations cannot rely on market forces or outside monitors to discipline hired managers. For such firms, managerial shareholdings may be a disproportionately important tool for controlling principal-agent problems. We study a random sample of 266 small, closely held U.S....

We test whether the gains from hiring an outside manager exceed the principal-agent costs of owner-manager separation at 266 small, closely held U.S. commercial banks. Our results suggest that hiring an outside manager can improve a bank's profit efficiency, but that these gains depend on...

Recent corporate scandals, together with the effects of globalization, have led to an increasing interest in corporate governance issues. Little attention has been paid, however, to international laws and recommendations dealing with corporate governance in banking from a global perspective....

This article provides an overview of research we have done on how different aspects of corporate governance influence bank performance. We use a random sample of state-chartered community banks in the Midwest and gather detailed information from bank examination reports on the ownership...

The recent financial crisis reopened debate about how much public assistance to give to distressed financial institutions. Some argue that even traditional assistance in the form of federal deposit insurance can create moral hazard problems, leading banks to take on greater risk once they are...

Current tax policies, while commonly thought to promote homeownership, have generally left low-income homeowners behind other homeowners. Using a number of simplifying assumptions, our estimates of lifetime homeowner tax subsidies suggest that the average homeowner in the lowest-income quintile...