Essays on Corporate Governance

Essays on Corporate Governance
Author: Radhakrishnan Gopalan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 109
Release: 2006
Genre: Corporate governance
ISBN: 9780542786884

My dissertation consists of three essays on Corporate Governance. The first essay studies a situation where corporate governance assumes importance because the manager and shareholders may disagree about optimal decisions due to heterogeneous prior beliefs. An important contribution of the essay is to characterize the optimal governance arrangement in such situations and to highlight the optimality of joint control. We apply our theory to an entrepreneur/manager's choice between private and public ownership and derive a number of testable predictions.

Essays in Corporate Governance

Essays in Corporate Governance
Author: Ian Appel
Publisher:
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2015
Genre:
ISBN:

In the first chapter ("Governance by Litigation") I study the role of shareholder litigation rights in corporate governance. To empirically identify the effects of shareholder lawsuits, I use the staggered adoption of universal demand (UD) laws in 23 states between 1989 and 2005. These laws impose a significant obstacle to lawsuits against directors and officers for breach of fiduciary duty. UD laws are associated with increased use of governance provisions (e.g., classified boards) that entrench managers or otherwise limit shareholder voice. I also document fewer institutional blockholders, changes to financial policies and CEO compensation, and impaired performance for firms subject to UD. Overall, my findings cast doubt on the notion that shareholder lawsuits primarily benefit attorneys rather than corporations or their shareholders.