Purpose – Theory suggests that the market for corporate control, which constitutes an important external governance mechanism, may substitute for internal governance. Consistent with this notion, using a novel measure of takeover vulnerability primarily based on state legislation, we...

Prior research shows that firms tend to recruit directors from the geographically-proximate area. Due to a limited supply of qualified individuals in a given area, firms located in close proximity have to share a limited pool of talented individuals. As a result, the larger the number of firms...

Motivated by agency theory, we investigate the effect of board size on corporate outcomes. To address endogeneity, we exploit the variations in the director-age populations across the states in the U.S. We argue that firms with access to a larger pool of potential directors tend to have larger...

Using a sample of 50 largest Chinese banks during the period of 2003-2010, we explore a comprehensive set of board characteristics (size, composition and functioning of the board) and analyze their impacts on bank performance and bank asset quality in China. We find that the number of board...