Working Paper: NBER ID: w15537
Authors: Lucian A. Bebchuk; Michael S. Weisbach
Abstract: This paper, which introduces the special issue on corporate governance co-sponsored by the Review of Financial Studies and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), reviews and comments on the state of corporate governance research. The special issue features seven papers on corporate governance that were presented in a meeting of the NBER's corporate governance project. Each of the papers represents state-of-the-art research in an important area of corporate governance research. For each of these areas, we discuss the importance of the area and the questions it focuses on, how the paper in the special issue makes a significant contribution to this area, and what we do and do not know about the area. We discuss in turn work on shareholders and shareholder activism, directors, executives and their compensation, controlling shareholders, comparative corporate governance, cross-border investments in global capital markets, and the political economy of corporate governance.
Keywords: Corporate Governance; Shareholder Activism; Executive Compensation; Independent Directors
JEL Codes: G34
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| shareholder activism (G34) | firm performance (L25) |
| independent directors (G34) | firm performance (L25) |
| independent directors (G34) | governance quality (H11) |
| controlling shareholders (G34) | minority shareholders (G34) |