Business groups play a large, sometimes dominant economic role in many countries. A number of studies find an association between firm-level corporate governance and market value, but none study the role of business group identity in firm level corporate governance or the value of “group...

We analyze whether fraud firms modify their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities in anticipation of the revelation of a corporate misconduct. Specifically, our results show that firms that participated in illegal price fixing schemes strategically increase their CSR initiatives...

This paper reviews the strategic nature of open book 'financial' management (hereafter referred to as open book management) in optimizing an organizations return on human capital and illustrates it using Manco Inc., as a case study. The challenges and advantages of implementing open book...

We investigate a sample of firms whose number of reported segments falls by one or more for the first time in their reporting history. The firms in our sample have a significantly larger diversification discount, underperform, and underinvest relative to comparable firms. Firms are more likely...

We provide an overview of the corporate governance practices of Brazilian public companies, based primarily on an extensive 2005 survey of 116 companies. We focus on the 88 responding Brazilian private firms which are not majority owned by the state or a foreign company. We identify areas where...

We compare the post-merger financial performance of acquiring firms that have well-connected (central) boards with the performance of less-connected (non-central) boards and find that central boards are associated with better performing acquisitions as evidenced by larger post-merger...

We use extensive hand collected surveys reporting governance practices of Brazilian firms in 2004, 2006, and 2009 to build a broad corporate governance index and analyze the evolution of corporate governance in Brazil and the association between governance and firm value. We find that corporate...

This report is the first known stocktaking of its kind to provide a regional overview of state-owned enterprise (SOE) governance reforms and challenges across the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. Part One summarises the challenges and governance practices related to...

Corporate governance is a relatively recent field of economic research. Interest in this field has been spurred by the high number of corporate scandals at the turn of the 21st century (Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, WorldCom, etc.). They opened the eyes of the public all over the world to the abuses...