Many governance reform proposals are based on the view that boards have been too friendly to executives, for example, by awarding them excessive pay. Although boards are often on friendly terms with executives, it is less clear that they have systematically failed to function in the interests of...

We show that country characteristics explain most of the cross-sectional variation in bank board independence. In contrast, country characteristics have little explanatory power for the fraction of outside bank directors with experience in the banking industry. Exploiting the time-series...