We find that the presence of independent directors who are blockholders (IDBs) in firms promotes better CEO contracting and monitoring, and higher firm valuation. Using a panel of about 11,500 firm-years with a unique, hand-collected dataset on IDB-identity and a novel instrument, we find that...

Using a large sample of firms from 38 countries over the 2001-2012 period, we find evidence that following say on pay (SoP) laws, CEO pay growth rates decline and the sensitivity of CEO pay to firm performance improves. These changes are mostly concentrated on firms with high excess pay and...

In the 1980s, stock exchanges and eventually the SEC took actions that affected the eligibility of listed firms to adopt dual-class shares with differential voting rights. We find that risk-adjusted stock returns increase (decrease) in reaction to regulatory events that decrease (increase) the...

We investigate the association between board size and firm valuation for a sample of 169 firms from 2002 to 2011 in South Africa (SA). The SA corporate context is interestingly and uniquely characterised by an urgency to meet affirmative action regulations, such as black empowerment in board...

This paper mainly studies goodwill as an intangible asset, and considers that goodwill and sales contain information about enterprise value. The results show that goodwill can predict the future return rate of China's stock market, indicating that investors in China’s stock market underact to...

Equity overvaluation is thought to create the potential for managerial misbehavior, while monitoring and corporate governance curb misbehavior. We combine these two insights from the literatures on misvaluation and governance to ask 'when does governance matter?' Examining firms with standard...