This paper examines how the size of the corporate directors' labor market affects board appointments in Italian private limited liability firms. As an exogenous shock to a firm's access to potential non-local directors, we exploit the gradual expansion of the high-speed railway network that...

We examine how the size of the corporate directors' labor market affects the quality of board appointments in Italian private firms. To establish the causality of the relationship, we exploit exogenous variations in firms' access to non-local potential directors following the gradual...