This chapter introduces the Research Handbook on Comparative Corporate Governance and surveys several of the central themes addressed in the book. Most corporate governance research deals with the interaction between board...
We study the effect of staggered boards (SBs) using a quasi-experiment: a 1990 law that imposed an SB on all Massachusetts-incorporated firms. The law led to an increase in Tobin's Q, investment in CAPEX and R&D, patents,...
This paper investigates whether female independent directors are more likely to impose high dividend payouts. We find evidence that firms with a larger fraction of female directors on their board have greater dividend payouts. This...
We study when firms choose to install boards and their roles in a historical setting where neither boards nor their duties are mandated by law. Boards arise in firms with large, heterogenous shareholder bases. We propose that an...
Across countries, banks have less gender diverse boards than other firms. Bank board diversity is particularly low in countries with greater gender gaps in PISA math scores and lower average math scores. We find similar results using...
Can female directors help save economies and the firms on whose boards they sit? Policy makers seem to think so. Numerous countries have implemented boardroom gender policies because of business case arguments. While women may be the...
Deciding between mandatory and/or default rules (or as they are also called: eligible law,enabling rules, optional rules, legal menus, rules allowing contracting around, fallback provisions, and dispositives Recht) is a...
Directors have traditionally been elected by a plurality of the votes cast. This means that in uncontested elections, a candidate who receives even a single vote is elected. Proponents of “shareholder democracy” have advocated a...
Together with a number of other countries including China Germany has a two-tier board system, i.e. its stock corporation law provides for the division between the management board and the supervisory board. This is different from most...
We study the relation between the chair of the board of directors and the CEO. We argue that substantial age dissimilarity between the two - giving rise to cognitive conflict - increases board monitoring and firm value for firms with...
Despite the increasing importance of shareholder voting, regulators have paid little attention to the rights of retail investors who own approximately 30% of publicly traded companies but who vote less than 30% of their shares. A...
The dialogue of the board and its chairman with investors is an established practice in many countries, such as the United Kingdom, the USA, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and recently also Germany. In the UK this dialogue covers the...