We show that firms located geographically close to one another share a similar probability of having staggered boards (or classified boards), an effect probably due to investor clientele, local competition, and social interactions. We then exploit the variation across the zip codes in the...

Prior research shows that religion promotes honesty. Honesty in turn motivates managers to view an expropriation from shareholders as self-serving, opportunistic, and unethical, thereby alleviating the agency conflict. Religious piety is thus expected to discourage agency-driven acquisitions...

Employing as a quasi-natural experiment an unexpected judgment by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that raised the difficulty of shareholder litigation, we explore the effect of shareholder litigation rights on board gender diversity. Our difference-in-difference estimates show that an...

CEOs are “lucky” when they receive stock option grants on days when the stock price is the lowest in the month of the grant, implying opportunistic timing. Extending the work of Bebchuk, Grinstein, Peyer (2010), we explore the effect of overall corporate governance quality on CEO luck....