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Do U.S. Firms Have the Best Corporate Governance? A Cross-Country Examination of the Relation between Corporate Governance and Shareholder Wealth

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Author Info
Reena Aggarwal
Isil Erel
Rene M. Stulz
Rohan Williamson

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Abstract

We compare the governance of foreign firms to the governance of similar U.S. firms. Using an index of firm governance attributes, we find that, on average, foreign firms have worse governance than matching U.S. firms. Roughly 8% of foreign firms have better governance than comparable U.S. firms. The majority of these firms are either in the U.K. or in Canada. When we define a firm's governance gap as the difference between the quality of its governance and the governance of a comparable U.S. firm, we find that the value of foreign firms increases with the governance gap. This result suggests that firms are rewarded by the markets for having better governance than their U.S. peers. It is therefore not the case that foreign firms are better off simply mimicking the governance of comparable U.S. firms. Among the individual governance attributes considered, we find that firms with board and audit committee independence are valued more. In contrast, other attributes, such as the separation of the chairman of the board and of the CEO functions, do not appear to be associated with higher shareholder wealth.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 12819.

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Date of creation: Jan 2007
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12819

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General
G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Capital and Ownership Structure
G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance
G38 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Government Policy and Regulation
K22 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Corporation and Securities Law

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  1. Brown, Lawrence D. & Caylor, Marcus L., 2006. "Corporate governance and firm valuation," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 409-434. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Lucian Bebchuk & Alma Cohen, 2004. "The Costs of Entrenched Boards," NBER Working Papers 10587, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Steven Drucker & Manju Puri, 2005. "On the Benefits of Concurrent Lending and Underwriting," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(6), pages 2763-2799, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. " A Survey of Corporate Governance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(2), pages 737-83, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Bebchuk, Lucian A. & Cohen, Alma, 2005. "The costs of entrenched boards," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 409-433, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Benjamin E. Hermalin & Michael S. Weisbach, 2003. "Boards of directors as an endogenously determined institution: a survey of the economic literature," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Apr, pages 7-26. [Downloadable!]
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  7. Paul Gompers & Joy Ishii & Andrew Metrick, 2003. "Corporate Governance And Equity Prices," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 118(1), pages 107-155, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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