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This paper is a survey of the literature on boards of directors, with an emphasis on research done subsequent to the Hermalin and Weisbach (2003) survey. The two questions most asked about boards are what determines their makeup and what determines their actions?
These questions are fundamentally intertwined, which complicates the study of boards because makeup and actions are jointly endogenous. A focus of this survey is how the literature, theoretical as well as empirically, deals - or on occasions fails to deal - with this complication. We suggest that many studies of boards can best be interpreted as joint statements about both the director-selection process and the effect of board composition on board actions and firm performance.
The lack of board diversity is one of the most controversial topics in corporate board governance. We investigate one important influence on diversity...
We document that, over the last decade, the cross-sectional variation in CEO pay levels has declined precipitously, both at the economy level and within...