Corporate governance theory predicts that leverage affects agency costs and thereby influences firm performance. We propose a new approach to test this theory using profit efficiency, or how close a firm's profits are to the benchmark of a best-practice firm facing the same exogenous...

This paper analyzes the roles of corporate governance in bank defaults during the recent financial crisis. We investigate the impacts of bank ownership and management structures on the probability of default of US commercial banks. Our results suggest that defaults are strongly influenced by a...

We address whether managers impact firm performance for better or worse, tackling three difficult empirical challenges. We employ exogenous external shocks that trigger managerial turnover to address identification concerns and provide plausible causal results. We analyze a single industry –...

This paper analyzes the roles of corporate governance in bank defaults during the recent financial crisis of 2007-2010. Using a data sample of 249 default and 4,021 no default US commercial banks, we investigate the impact of bank ownership and management structures on the probability of...