Why is poor governance pervasive in the mutual fund industry? Researchers, practitioners and regulators have attributed this failing to a lack of director independence from fund management. This paper proposes an alternate explanation: fund governance is contagious. Fund directors act as...

Six years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the question of whether the U.S. financial system has become less risky remains unanswered. On the one side, new regulations including Dodd-Frank and Basel III have made improvements by requiring higher bank capital, and financial institutions...

We examine ballot order effects in independent director elections. Our results show that down-ballot directors receive considerably less opposition from shareholders. This result holds in a sample where directors are positioned alphabetically on the proxy ballot, and, thus unrelated to the...