One of the most outstanding features of the trend toward globalization has been the increased importance of foreign direct investment (FDI) flows around the world. This study estimates the determinant of FDI flows using the gravity equation, controlling for the importance of both the traditional...

This paper formally proves that economic outcomes are not independent from the corporate governance system and its ability to protect shareholders’ rights. This is achieved by extending a neoclassical growth model to incorporate an imperfectly functioning market for managerial labour enabling...

This paper uses a unique US dataset to analyze the demand for Directors' and Officers' liability insurance. This insurance protects managers mostly from shareholder litigation. Corporate insurance presents a much different environment than individual insurance and calls for in-depth empirical...

Contemporary bank governance is criticized for manager-dominated (insider) boards of directors, but from the beginning of the nineteenth century, bank presidents appear also to have operated as chairmen of the boards of directors. However, the managers were constrained by a variety of rules that...

The shareholders of public corporations have considerable interest in the choice of individual to serve as CEO of their company. They want to be assured that the company has a viable plan in place to replace the current CEO if necessary. Historically, boards have deferred to outgoing CEO,...

In recent years, regulators have introduced gender diversity quota laws and dis-closure-based approaches to increase the representation of women on corporate boards. These developments have set off a global discussion about the importance of diversity in the boardroom and what role governments...

We use the history of private limited liability companies (PLLCs) to challenge two pervasive assumptions in the literature: (1) Anglo-American legal institutions were better for economic development than continental Europe’s civil-law institutions; and (2) the corporation was the superior form...

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on director interlocks by illustrating and analysing the interlocking directorships among the Italian, French, German, UK and US listed Blue Chips. The comparison of the five countries considered shows that two national models stand...

Using objective measures of investor protections in 170 countries, I establish that the level of investor protection matters for cross-country differences in GDP growth: countries with stronger protections tend to grow faster than those with poor investor protections