We investigate whether Japan's much touted governance reforms improve its firms' management of cash, economic performance, and valuation. Consistent with an improvement in governance since 2000, Japanese firms hold less cash and increase payouts to shareholders. Improvements in performance are...

Shareholder activism is now an important global phenomenon. We use a sample of nearly 7,000 activist shareholder campaigns across 56 countries to address two principal research questions related to the rise of activism. First, we develop a measure of corporate governance regulation that captures...