The literature disagrees on the link between so-called busy boards (where many independent directors hold multiple board seats) and firm performance. Some argue that busyness certifies a director’s ability and that such directors are value enhancing. Others argue that “over-boarded”...

This study visits the role of shareholder proposals in the governance of public corporations by studying withdrawn shareholder proposals. Among all shareholders, unions are the most likely to withdraw proposals. Furthermore, firms with a record of poor performance, lower insider ownership and...

Using a large sample of monthly gross flows from 1997 to 2003, we uncover several previously undocumented regularities in investor behavior. First, investor purchases and sales produce fund-level gross flows that are highly persistent. Persistence in fund flows dominates performance as a...

This paper examines advisor choice decisions by publicly traded REITs and listed property companies in Asia-Pacific real estate markets. Using a sample of 168 firms, we find robust evidence that firms strategically evaluate and compare the increased agency costs associated with external...

I examine the ex ante decision to make an agent's pay-performance sensitivity an inverse function of organization size. I focus on mutual funds and their decision to use compensation contracts that reduce the advisor's marginal compensation as the fund grows (a declining-rate contract) over the...

I examine the role of convenience in the mutual fund industry. I find that investors pay more for relatively convenient funds, and that the flows to convenient funds are less responsive to performance. These findings suggest that investors do not evaluate mutual funds independently, but rather...

Mutual fund advisors make portfolio decisions for their funds on a daily basis. We examine the location of these portfolio decision rights on two dimensions. First, we consider the geographic location of the decision rights. Second, we consider whether the decision rights remain with an advisor...

We study how uncompensated research and development (R&D) spillovers – the leakage of proprietary information through imitation or theft – affect firms’ investment decisions. Using variation in property rights protections across different regions within China we find that (1) uncompensated...

We explore how property rights protections across different regions in China affect the flow of proprietary information and managers' incentives to disclose details of financial and operating performance. Our focus on research and development spillovers as a proxy for information leakages to...