We test under what circumstances boards discipline managers and whether such interventions improve performance. We exploit exogenous variation due to the staggered adoption of corporate governance laws in formerly communist countries coupled with detailed “hard” information about the...

This paper investigates under what circumstances boards of directors fire CEOs and whether this action leads to better firm performance. We use unique and detailed data, covering 473 companies in the transition region, on boards’ actions, expectations and beliefs about CEO ability. We find...