Corporate managers often invest in activities that are deemed to be socially responsible. In some instances, these investments enhance shareholder value. However, in other cases, altruistic managers or managers who privately benefit from the positive attention arising from these activities may...

This paper uses Taiwanese data to examine the impact of firm-level corporate governance mechanisms on firms' average cash holdings. Specifically, it examines how a firm's number of banking relationships and the percentages of managerial ownership and board ownership impact the firm's level of...

We examine how the director independence mandates of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and related reforms affected board geography and the quality of financial reporting. Using 1998-2006 data on the residential addresses of individual directors, we document that the geographic proximity to...

Divergent views exist about whether boards must tradeoff advising for monitoring performance when utilizing outside versus inside directors. We suggest a dichotomous tradeoff focus underestimates outside directors' impact on board performance. We find outside director tenure positively...

In their role as initiators of new business projects, CEOs have an advantage over access to and control over project-related information. This exacerbates pre-existing agency frictions and may lead to investment inefficiencies. To counteract this challenge, incentive compensation for corporate...

CEO activism — the practice of CEOs taking public positions on environmental, social, and political issues not directly related to their business — has become a hotly debated topic in corporate governance. To better understand the implications of CEO activism, we examine its prevalence, the...

This study evaluates the effect of board composition on firm corporate social responsibility (CSR) score. We report new evidence which shows a significant and negative association between co-opted directors and the CSR score. This finding is robust to various approaches that account for...

This paper examines how companies respond to negative ESG incidents by appointing directors with experience in charitable organizations. We find that firms are more likely to make such appointments following ESG incidents, especially when these incidents attract substantial media attention or...

This article investigates the causal factors underlying cornerstone investor (CI) participation in initial public offerings in China's offshore Hong Kong market. Prospectus-based declarations on such allocations suggest that CI undertakings offer strong certification effects. Entrepreneurs...