This paper analyses the effects of board composition on the behaviour and performance of a sample of 114 Italian local public utilities, for which information about 1630 directors during 1994-2004 has been collected. This period is particularly interesting because of the legal changes that...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of corporate governance on technical efficiency. We use the Translog stochastic production function to derive technical efficiency. Four empirical results are observed: (1) Technical efficiency has a negative relationship with the following two...

We argue that when stakeholder protection is left to the voluntary initiative of managers, concessions to social activists and pressure groups can turn into a self-entrenchment strategy for incumbent CEOs. Stakeholders other than shareholders thus benefit from corporate governance rules putting...

Whereas most U.S. corporations are widely held, the predominant form of ownership in East Asia is control by a family, which often supplies a top manager. These features of "crony capitalism" are actually more pronounced in Western Europe. In both regions, the salient agency problem is...

Predicting corporate distress can have a significant impact on the economy because it serves as an efficient early warning signal. This study develops distress prediction models incorporating both governance and financial variables and examines the impact of major corporate governance...

This paper analyzes capital market reactions to international bank M&A. We investigate combined stock return patterns of targets, bidders, and their peers upon takeover announcement, and closing or withdrawal. We distinguish five common M&A hypotheses and relate characteristic and mutually...

The current world wide economy met deep changes, especially in the last decades, changes which had major effects over business area. These determined the adoption of some decisions, at the level of main actors of economical life, which allow them to resist at new challenges. In this way,...

In practice, at the scale of world economy, reciprocal exchange activities between operators, takes place within an economic-legal determined framework. With regards to the international relationship, the economic and legal framework in the present context of the globalization of the world...

The request for appropriate financial and accounting information in terms of quality is marked by the agency and governance problems which were delineated and commented while trying to find feasible solutions. The paper analyze not only the convergence phenomenon within the managerial...