Little evidence exists on whether boards help managers make better decisions. We provide evidence that strong and independent boards help overconfident CEOs avoid honest mistakes when they seek to acquire other companies. In addition, we find that once-overconfident CEOs make better acquisition...

Surprisingly, prior research finds that the attention paid by active institutional investors to individual stocks has no real effects on disclosure and liquidity decisions by management. In contrast, after categorizing these same active institutional investors as either dedicated or transient,...