Independent Directors

Board Compensation and Firm Performance: The Role of 'Independent' Board Members

Independent directors and controlling shareholders around the world

In this paper, we examine independent directors as a legal transplant from dispersed ownership systems to concentrated ownership ones. We focus on...

Directors’ Incentives from Potential Regulatory Penalties: Evidence from their Voting

What makes independent directors perform their monitoring duty? One possible reason is that they are concerned about being sanctioned by regulators if...

Reputation Incentives of Independent Directors: Impacts on Board Monitoring and Adverse Corporate Actions

We find a large body of evidence that independent director reputation incentives can vary across directors and can significantly influence important...

The Rise of Bankruptcy Directors

In this Article, we use hand-collected data to shed light on a troubling development in bankruptcy practice. We show that distressed companies,...

How Valuable are Independent Directors? Evidence from External Distractions

We provide new evidence on the value of independent directors by exploiting exogenous events that seriously distract independent directors....

Deconstructing Independent Directors

In this paper we argue that boards of directors lack the mandate, the incentives and the ability to control insiders, especially in jurisdictions where...

Board Structure and Price Informativeness

We develop and test the hypothesis that private information incorporated into stock prices (price informativeness) affects the structure of...

Seven Gaping Holes in Our Knowledge of Corporate Governance

In Closer Look, we highlight significant “holes” in our knowledge of corporate governance. These are central issues where insufficient or...

Rewarding Outside Directors

Value of Politically Connected Independent Directors: Evidence from the Anti-Corruption Campaign in China

A new regulation issued in the end of 2013 as part of the anti-corruption campaign in China leads to a wave of resignation of politically connected...

Bank Governance

According to a common narrative, in addition to inadequate capital and liquidity, the failure of banks in the financial crisis also reflected their poor...