The chapter continues and advances our earlier research on ‘Board Models in Europe’.** We explore ‘The Structure of the Board of Directors’ with a view to the basic governance structure as provided by a board model vis-à-vis techniques of structuring the decision-making body, which can...

The financial crisis has generated a renewed interest in financial regulation as well as corporate governance more generally, among both academics and lawmakers. A large number of bills have been introduced in the Congress to address one or more aspects of corporate governance, including most...

Using a new dataset of corporate voting-rights from 1971 to 2015, we find that young dual-class firms trade at a premium and operate at least as efficiently as young single-class firms. As dual-class firms mature, their valuation declines, and they become less efficient in their margins,...

We study the behavior of short sellers as informed market participants and examine potential sources of their information. Using a newly available dataset with high-frequency short sales data, we find evidence of significant increases in short sales immediately prior to large insider sales, but...

Amid an economic downturn caused in part by financial deregulation, it is odd to most people outside the Beltway that Congress should be actively considering (and indeed have passed in the House) a raft of proposal for more financial deregulation. Yet the politics for both parties require...

Although the EU has achieved an impressive degree of harmonization in the securities laws of its member states, it has not yet advanced any effective collective private remedies for violations of those securities laws. This is especially noteworthy since the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in...

Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) in the world's most important financial markets have been falling for the past decade. This has not been a gentle decline, but a collapse that preceded the 2008 financial crisis and shows no sign of abating. Public companies have been an integral part of developed...

This paper examines the health performance rankings of the 50 U.S. state governments (SGs), and addresses the relationship between SG performance rankings and SG environmental health, economic prosperity, and state healthcare policy. We use the data envelopment analysis (DEA) to estimate and...

The alarming rise in drinking water pollution across the U.S. is often attributed to cost cutting pressures faced by local officials. We know little, however, about why these pressures are so severe for some cities compared to others. We present a new theory to argue that an important...

Fair value accounting has been argued as one contributing factor to the recent global financial crisis occurred from 2007 to 2008. However, recent empirical studies find no significant evidence for this role of fair value accounting. One reason for this inconsistency comes from the weaknesses of...