We investigate whether the concentration of power in the hands of individuals characterized as business leaders influences the variability of corporate performance. We do so by proposing an original method to estimate the concentration of power that takes into account both the individual...

We document a negative (positive) relationship between firm performance and changes in the ownership of large (small) institutional investors. Small investors "exit'' while blockholders increase their holdings following poor performance. We find evidence that large investors increase ownership...

Using a balanced panel data of 82 Italian listed companies, for 984 firm-year observations, the relationship between corporate governance, risk-taking, and risk-adjusted performance is investigated. The beta and the standard deviation, as proxies for risk-taking, and two different measures of...

Family firms are an important phenomenon of the German capital market. We analyse the broadest market segment of the German Stock Exchange, the CDAX, for the years 1998 to 2008. According to a founding-family definition almost half of all CDAX-listed non-financial firms in Germany can be...

Consistent with the view that “busy” analysts face time and effort constraints in monitoring firms, we find that higher busyness lowers firm valuation. The underlying mechanisms include lower operating performance, higher cost of capital, greater earnings management, excessive CEO...

This study attempts to show that firms affiliated to family-controlled business groups are associated with poorer performance compared to firms without such affiliation (independent firms) based on the ROA performance measure. Moreover, the empirical evidence suggests that heterogeneity in these...

This paper provides new insights on governance – performance relationship using recent data (2007 to 2015) on anti-takeover provisions' incidence in sample firms. We present “nG (new Governance) Index”, an unequal weighted measure of corporate governance that captures the heterogeneity of...

We show that board tenure exhibits an inverted U‐shaped relation with firm value and accounting performance. The quality of corporate decisions, such as M&A, financial reporting quality, and CEO compensation, also has a quadratic relation with board tenure. Our results are consistent with the...

We study the effect of corporate board structure on firm performance under different product market conditions. Using customer-supplier links to identify exogenous downstream demand shocks, we find that board independence has a more significant effect on firm performance when the firm-specific...

We document time varying investor sentiment for corporate social responsibility (“CSR”) performance. We show that announcements of CSR activities generate positive abnormal returns during periods when investors place a valuation premium on CSR performance. In addition, we find that firms...