Theory

System and Evolution in Corporate Governance

A Theory of Financial Media

We present a model of media coverage of corporate announcements. Firms strategically use the media to communicate corporate announcements to a group of traders who do not observe announcements directly, but only through media...

Fiduciary Duty in Transitional Civil Law Jurisdictions Lessons from the Incomplete Law Theory

In Anglo-American law, fiduciary duty is the core legal concept to address conflicts among directors/managers and shareholders. The concept is developed and constantly refined by courts in the process of adjudication. By contrast,...

The Dark Side of Shareholder Influence: Toward a Holdup Theory Of Stakeholders in Comparative Corporate Governance

Corporate Social Responsibility and Firm Risk: Theory and Empirical Evidence

This paper presents an industry equilibrium model where firms have a choice to engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. We model CSR as an investment to increase product differentiation that allows firms to benefit...

The Informativeness Principle Without the First-Order Approach

Holmström (1979) provides a condition for a signal to have positive value assuming the validity of the first-order approach. This paper extends Holmström's analysis to settings where the first-order approach may not hold. We...

Corporate Governance and Expected Stock Returns: Evidence from Germany

Executive Compensation: A Modern Primer

This article studies traditional and modern theories of executive compensation, bringing them together under a simple unifying framework accessible to the general-interest reader. We analyze assignment models of the level of pay,...

The Team Production Model as a Paradigm

This paper forms part of the proceedings for the 6th Annual Berle Symposium (2014), which focused on Margaret Blair and Lynn Stout?s 1999 Virginia Law Review article <a href="http://ssrn.com...Read more

Viewing Artificial Persons in the AI Age Through the Lens of History

With talk of driverless companies and bots substituting for human beings on company boards either in part or completely, the spectre of a future controlled by entities devoid of human beings is upon us. But has the future been here for...

Taming or Protecting the Modern Corporation? Shareholder-Stakeholder Debatesin a Comparative Light

Blood and Money: Kin altruism, governance, and inheritance inthe family firm

This paper develops a theory of governance and inheritance within family firms based on kin altruism (Hamilton, 1964). Family members weigh the payoffs to relatives in proportion to relatedness. The theory shows that family...