We study the role of facial appearance in corporate director (re-)elections by means of director photographs published in annual reports. We find that shareholders use inferences from facial appearance in corporate elections, as a better (higher...Read more
To address the question as to whether managers manipulate accounting numbers
downwards prior to management buyouts (MBOs), we implement an industry-adjusted
buyout-specific approach and receive an affirmative answer. In UK buyout...Read more
A firm's corporate social responsibility (CSR) practice and its country's legal origin are strongly correlated. This relation is valid for various CSR ratings coming from several large datasets that comprise more than 23,000 large companies from...Read more
We show that ambiguity aversion generates endogenous disagreement between a firm?s insider and outside shareholders. Outsiders are well-diversified, but the insider holds only equity of the firm, leading to endogenous difference of opinion. We...Read more
Shareholder valuations are economically and statistically positively correlated with independent directors? power, gauged by social network power centrality. Powerful independent directors? sudden deaths reduce shareholder value significantly;...Read more
We examine how international variation in corporate future-oriented behavior, such as corporate social responsibility (CSR) and research and development (R&D) investment, could partially stem from characteristics of the languages spoken at...Read more
Understanding the role of culture in corporate governance has become a subject of growing importance. Today, no institutional analysis of corporate governance systems would be complete without considering the cultural environment in which such...Read more
Recent regulatory initiatives that attempt to encourage shareholder engagement, ensure board independence and improve the operation and transparency of corporate groups are of great interest to both academics and practitioners. These initiatives...Read more
In the spirit of Merton (1987), we find that improving the dissemination of company news increases the attention investors pay to a firm. We exploit a regulatory change, the European Union Transparency Directive, which pushed Continental European...Read more
The seemingly never ending scandals in the world of finance with their damaging effects on value and human welfare argue strongly for an addition to the current paradigm of financial economics. We summarize here our new theory of integrity that...Read more
This paper examines how governance and risk management affect risk-taking in banks. It distinguishes between good risks, which are risks that have an ex ante private reward for the bank on a stand-alone basis, and bad risks, which do not have...Read more
In the corporate finance tradition, starting with Berle and Means (1932), corporations should generally be run to maximize shareholder value. The agency view of corporate social responsibility (CSR) considers CSR an agency problem and a waste of...Read more