Economic growth is below what would be needed to resume rapid convergence to average OECD living standards. On-going efforts to improve the business climate are laudable, but need to be widened and strengthened. Much progress has been achieved in reducing red tape, but it is only recently that...

We examine how government ownership affects the top management team's (TMT) pay dispersion and how such TMT pay dispersion affects subsequent firm performance. We test three competing views on the influences of government ownership, referred to as the agency view, the equity view, and the...

The burgeoning literature on corporate governance, both in economics and in law, has focused heavily on the agency costs of delegated management. It is therefore striking to encounter a large number of well-established and highly successful companies that have long been under the complete...

US airports negotiate legally binding contracts with airlines and finance large investment projects with revenue bonds. Applying insights from transaction cost economics, we argue that the observed variation in contractual and financing arrangements at US airports corresponds to the parties'...

The paper analyzes the process of global diffusion of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the oil industry and how interactions between different actors have contributed to this outcome. It starts from the empirical puzzle that CSR has spread globally among transnational corporations since...

We analyze the effect of committee formation on how corporate boards perform two main functions: setting CEO pay and overseeing the financial reporting process. The use of performance-based pay schemes induces the CEO to manipulate earnings, which leads to an increased need for board oversight....

We analyze the board of directors' equilibrium strategies for setting CEO incentive pay and overseeing financial reporting and their effects on the level of earnings management. We show that an increase in CEO equity incentives does not necessarily increase earnings management because directors...

Berkshire Hathaway, among history's largest and most successful corporations, shuns middlemen; its chairman, the legendary investor Warren Buffett, excoriates financial intermediaries. The acquisitive conglomerate rarely borrows money, retains brokers, or hires consultants. Its governance is...

By the time a young Ronald Coase was composing “The Nature of the Firm” (1937), litigation had already started wending its way through American courts that took up questions that really anticipated Grossman, Hart and Moore on control rights and Simon and Williamson on adaptation, vertical...

The governance of central banks has two dimensions: corporate governance and public governance. Public governance is an institutional framework whereby the general public governs a central bank by and through the legislative and executive bodies in a country. This paper argues that the...