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...

We use instrumental variables methods to disentangle the effect of founder–CEOs on performance from the effect of performance on founder–CEO status. Our instruments for founder–CEO status are the proportion of the firm's founders that are dead and the number of people who founded the...

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...

As scientists, we are conditioned to constantly look for new methods to advance our knowledge. But, sometimes we can achieve our goals more easily by using old methods better. This commentary lists some ABCs of empirical work that I think are useful to remember. The term “ABCs” is...

Should boards of financial firms be blamed for the financial crisis' Using a large sample of data on nonfinancial and financial firms for the period 1996-2007, I document that the governance of financial firms is, on average, not obviously worse than in nonfinancial firms. Even the issue of...

This study examines how directors make decisions that involve shareholders and other stakeholders. Using vignettes derived from seminal court cases, we construct an index of directors' shareholderism as a general orientation on this issue. In a survey of the entire population of directors and...

We use a large sample of guessed ice break-up dates for the Tanana River in Alaska to study differences between outcomes of decisions made by individuals versus groups. We estimate the distribution of guesses conditional on whether they were made by individual bettors or betting pools. We...

What makes a successful CEO? We combine a near-exhaustive sample of CEOs of Swedish companies with data on their cognitive and non-cognitive ability and height at age 18. CEOs differ from other high-skill professions most in non-cognitive ability. The median large-company CEO belongs to the top...

Can female directors help save economies and the firms on whose boards they sit? Policy makers seem to think so. Numerous countries have implemented boardroom gender policies because of business case arguments. While women may be the key to healthy economies, I argue that more research needs to...

We document that women are less represented on corporate boards in Finance and more traditional STEM industry sectors. Even after controlling for differences in firm and country characteristics, average diversity in these sectors is 24% lower than the mean. Our findings suggest that...