We study how the composition of the board of directors and incentives from direct shareholdings affect firm performance in a sample of large, publicly traded firms. We use an instrumental variables approach that controls directly for endogeneity of both shareholdings and board composition. We...

Despite SEC and state-level resistance, and contrary to the trend pursued by other firms, many electric utilities have diversified into non-electric and unregulated businesses. Moreover, this failure to focus has been rewarded with higher firm values, again contrary to the discounts documented...