We model firms' incentives to voluntarily adopt corporate governance mechanisms and hypothesize that management's ability to extract private benefits, the need for external funds, and the ease with which a firm's assets may be monitored are important determinants of the level of governance....

Berle and Means's analysis of the corporation - in particular, their view that those in control are not the owners of the corporation - raises questions about actions that corporations take to counter concerns regarding management's influence. What mechanisms, if any, do corporations implement...

Berle and Means's analysis of the corporation - in particular, their view that those in control are not the owners of the corporation - raises questions about actions that corporations take to counter concerns regarding management's influence. What mechanisms, if any, do corporations implement...

Given recent empirical work suggesting that Canada is one of two countries in which outcomes favourable to shareholder activists are more likely than in the US, one might wonder whether shareholders in Canadian public companies have become too empowered. This concern is perhaps especially acute...

Following the implementation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, scholars argued that one-size-fits-all corporate governance imposed disproportionately high compliance costs on small businesses, weakening their competitiveness vis-à-vis larger firms. As an alternative, these critics contended that...

In a typical public company, shareholders can elect the board, appoint auditors, and approve fundamental changes. Firms with dual class share (DCS) structures alter this balance by inviting the subordinate shareholders to carry the financial risk of investing in the corporation without providing...

Examinations of public company board composition have focused on the absence of women but rarely on the absence of visible minorities. Given an increasingly diverse domestic population and increased participation of second-generation immigrants in the professional cadre, we think that board...

Berle and Means' analysis of the corporation, and in particular their view that those in control are not the owners of the corporation, raises questions about actions that corporations take to counter concerns regarding management's influence. What mechanisms, if any, do corporations implement...