Recent surveys show that 24% of independent directors in Russel 3,000 firms have continuously served on their boards for fifteen years or more. Based on a sample of S&P 1500 firms over the period 1998-2012, we document strong positive effects on financial performance for firms with one, very...

We examine the impact of the social attachment through age similarity between the independent directors and the CEO on earnings management. Using changes in independent director composition due to director death and retirement for identification, we find that firms with the presence of the...

We exploit the arrival of industry-wide synergistic merger waves to identify whether classifiedboards deter takeover bids. In a stylized model, we show that when target classified boards arecostly to bidders, their negative effect on takeover likelihood is more pronounced during mergerwaves....