We examine whether outside directors with government experience add value to their firms. We find that government directors are more likely to miss board meetings and that their appointment announcements are greeted more negatively. Firms with government directors also experience poorer...

Boards are crucial to shareholder wealth. Yet, little is known about how shareholder oversight affects director incentives. Using exogenous industry shocks to institutional investor portfolios, we find that institutional investor distraction weakens board oversight. Distracted institutions are...

This experimental study investigates how the use of deferred variable remuneration, as opposed to immediate payment of variable remuneration and fixed payment, would affect both misconduct and productivity. Unsurprisingly, the study finds lower rates of misconduct under deferred variable...

Using a sample from 38 economies, we examine the relation between bank regulators’ supervisory power and loan spreads. We find that loans issued by banks in economies with more powerful supervisors have higher spreads. The positive association is more pronounced when firms have lower credit...

Sequential search is often costly and time-consuming. The time cost is usually unknown ex ante and its presence and duration must be inferred as the search progresses. We disentangle the effect of time cost on search behavior from people’s (in)ability to perceive time delay between offers. We...

We show that political polarization between directors and a CEO negatively impacts the effectiveness of corporate boards. At the director level, polarization increases directors’ incentive to monitor the CEO but creates a hostile board environment and discourages moderate directors’ board...