After pressure from shareholder activists, proxy advisory firms, and the New York Stock Exchange, the Securities and Exchange Commission has eliminated uninstructed broker voting in director elections. We observe that average director approval rates remain high after the change in regulation,...

Communication is at the core of good governance, yet, because of data constraints, research on boardroom communication is almost nonexistent. I examine communication in the boardroom using a survey of the entire population of directors and CEOs of publicly-traded firms in Sweden during 2006. The...

Although some argue that tokenism drives the selection of female directors, we show that they have a significant impact on measures of board effectiveness. In a large panel of data on publicly-traded firms from 1996-2003, we find that (1) the likelihood that a female director has attendance...

Over the past few years, research in corporate governance has devoted increased attention to board of directors’ involvement in the strategic decision making process. But in spite of its growing interest, the literature provides theoretical pluralism and mixed empirical results. Indeed, the...