To examine whether outside (or independent) directors monitor management in the shareholder interest, the authors collect Japanese companies that experience 33 per cent or more performance declines during the financial crisis (for the 2008 accounting year) and investigate how board independence...

We investigated the relation between changes in cash dividend payments, non-public tradable shares, and the percentage of ownership of the controlling shareholder in Chinese firms before and after the Split-share structure reform. We found a significant reduction in cash dividends before and...