Board of Directors
Are “Bankruptcy Directors” Bad for Creditors?
A new paper studies the rise of so-called “bankruptcy directors,” typically former bankruptcy lawyers, investment bankers, or distressed debt traders who join corporate boards...
Elizabeth Holmes Is the Exception: More Women on Boards Lead to Less Corporate Wrongdoing
The so-called “opportunity theory” suggests that women are statistically underrepresented in white-collar offenses because they are underrepresented in higher corporate echelons. A forthcoming paper...
Serving Shareholders Doesn’t Mean Putting Profit Above All Else
The time has come for companies, economists, and society to abandon the argument that the only responsibility of business is to maximize profits.
Editor’s note:...
Firms with Owners in Common Are Freer about Publicly Disclosing Information
The accounting literature has long examined how public disclosures relate to firm competitiveness. If common ownership is in fact hurting competition, companies with owners...
Turning Corporations into Democracies
The problem with encouraging firms to maximize shareholder welfare is how to prevent managers and special interests from diverting corporate resources in the name of shareholder...
Where Friedman Was Wrong
A new paper by Oliver Hart and Luigi Zingales argues that a company’s objective should be the maximization of shareholders’ welfare, not value.
In 1970,...
Enhancing Competition? The Role of Governance in Increasing Exposure to Competition
Contemporary corporate governance reform has been a mixed bag: reforms that increase a company’s exposure to competition through the control market have been helpful,...
Are Managers Who Oppose Shareholder Proposals Acting in the Best Interest of Shareholders?
A new Stigler Center working paper finds that managers who resist shareholder proposals are typically acting responsibly, as opposed to acting on their own...
Wells Fargo and the Failure of Boards and Regulators
Two new reports concerning the Wells Fargo scandal suggest that the bank's senior management, its board of directors, and the regulators all knew about the bank's...
The Non-Performing Assets of Wells Fargo
The entire board of Wells Fargo, not just the CEO, needs to be replaced.
In 1992, shareholder activist Bob Monks purchased a full-page ad in...
