The subprime crisis highlights how little we know about bank governance. This paper addresses a long-standing gap in the literature by analyzing the relationship between board governance and performance using a sample of banking firm data that spans 34years. We find that board independence is...

Many corporations reward their outside directors with a modest fee for each board meeting they attend. Using a large panel data set on director attendance behavior in publicly-listed firms for the period 1996-2003, we provide robust evidence that directors are less likely to have attendance...

A large literature documents that women are different from men in their choices and preferences, but little is known about gender differences in the boardroom. If women must be like men to break the glass ceiling, we might expect gender differences to disappear among directors. Using a large...

Executives can only impact firm outcomes if they have influence over crucial decisions. On the basis of this idea, we develop and test the hypothesis that firms whose CEOs have more decision-making power should experience more variability in performance. Focusing primarily on the power the CEO...

Many governance reform proposals are based on the view that boards have been too friendly to executives, for example, by awarding them excessive pay. Although boards are often on friendly terms with executives, it is less clear that they have systematically failed to function in the interests of...

We show that female directors have a significant impact on board inputs and firm outcomes. In a sample of US firms, we find that female directors have better attendance records than male directors, male directors have fewer attendance problems the more gender-diverse the board is, and women are...

Boards of directors are intellectually interesting; the literature on boards has academic impact and there is substantial scope for this literature to have policy impact. I illustrate these points by combining a select review of the literature with evidence from a variety of data sets. Boards...