Rising shareholder activism following poor corporate performance and a subsequent drop in shareholder value at many major U.S. corporations has rekindled interest in duality and corporate governance. Despite limited empirical evidence, duality (chairman of the board and CEO are the same...

The decision of a firm to divest itself of a portion of its assets has important implications for economic efficiency. These implications have been examined extensively in the financial economics literature. One dimension of that decision that has been largely overlooked in this literature is...