In recent years, regulators have introduced gender diversity quota laws and dis-closure-based approaches to increase the representation of women on corporate boards. These developments have set off a global discussion about the importance of diversity in the boardroom and what role governments...

The popular and academic literatures report that women, Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans are under-represented on US corporate boards of directors, relative to their incidence in the US labor force. We confirm this observation by tabulating the presence of female and under-represented...

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...

In 2017, “The Big Three” institutional investors launched campaigns to increase gender diversity on corporate boards. We estimate that their campaigns led firms to add at least 2.5 times as many female directors in 2019 as they had in 2016, accounting for most of the increase in board gender...

In 2017, "The Big Three" institutional investors launched campaigns to increase gender diversity on corporate boards. We estimate that their campaigns led American corporations to add at least 2.5 times as many female directors in 2019 as they had in 2016. Firms increased diversity by...

Leadership roles in banking remain dominated by men; only about one in six bank board members is female. Connections among board members can improve firm performance, but women on boards are much less connected than men. In this paper, we study how gender relates to the role of connections: how...

We study corporate philanthropy using an original database that includes firm-level data on dollar giving, giving priorities, governance, and managerial involvement in giving programs. Results provide some support for the theory that giving enhances shareholder value, as firms in the same...

We investigate corporate governance experts' claim that it is detrimental to a firm to reappoint former CEOs as directors after they step down as CEOs. We find that more successful and more powerful former CEOs are more likely to be reappointed to the board multiple times after they step down as...

We examine which independent directors are held accountable when investors sue firms for financial and disclosure related fraud. Investors can name independent directors as defendants in lawsuits, and they can vote against their re-election to express displeasure over the directors'...

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of prior year firm’s performance on subsequent year firm’s corporate governance mechanism. We used board size, CEO–Chairman combined structure and audit expenditure as a firm level corporate governance mechanism. The panel data of...