Public attention to a firm may provide valuable monitoring, but it may also have a dark side by constraining management’s decisions and distracting it. We use inclusion in the S&P 500 index as a positive shock to public attention....
Perhaps the most important corporate law debate over the last several years concerns whether directors and executives should manage the corporation to maximize value for investors, or also take into account the interests of other...
This paper examines racial preferences of shareholders in the context of corporate director elections. Focusing on director nominees receiving negative recommendations from the dominant proxy advisor ISS, we document a higher...
I examine changes in CEO labor market outcomes following corporate environmental failures. CEOs of firms subject to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enforcements experience a decline in labor market opportunities as outside...
We create a new measure called director-specific quality (DSQ) that captures the collection of value-relevant transferable attributes unique to a director and explains 10% of the variation in firm value. Directors with higher DSQ...
We provide large-sample evidence on whether U.S. publicly traded corporations opportunistically use voluntary disclosures about their commitments to employee diversity. We document significant discrepancies between...
We provide the first systematic evidence of contractual innovation in the terms of poison pill plans. In response to the increase in hedge fund activism, pills have changed to include anti-activist provisions, such as low trigger...
Although debt finance and restructuring rarely command headlines, they collectively comprise some of the most heated corporate battles in recent history. The field’s contemporary participants, including private equity...
Many important provisions of US securities law – most notably, crucial elements of the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) legislation enacted in 2002 – apply only to firms that have a public float of at least $75 million. Public float (i.e., the...
We survey a representative sample of the U.S. population to understand stakeholders’ desire to see their firms exit Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. 61% of respondents think that firms should exit Russia, regardless of the...
Prof. Oliver Hart
Harvard University
Dr Tom Gosling interviews Prof Oliver Hart, (Nobel Laureate 2016, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University and ECGI Fellow) about his paper, "The New Corporate Governance", co-authored with Luigi Zingales. Find out Olivers's thoughts on these key issues: Responsible Capitalism Shareholder democracy Shareholder welfare ECGI Conversations is a......