This paper tests the relationship between ownership/leadership structures and stock returns for firms listed in Taiwan. A ¡§Governance Index¡¨ is built based on four different aspects of the company¡¦s governance structure: 1.) CEO duality, 2.) Size of the board of directors, 3.) Managements¡¦ shareholdings and 4.) Block shareholders¡¦ holding. This index is used as a proxy measure of the effectiveness of corporate governance mechanism. I show that firms identified by the governance index as under sounding governance outperform those under poor governance. The results indicate that the corporate governance index built in this study is a valid measure in evaluating the effectiveness of corporate governance of firms in Taiwan. I demonstrate one additional application of the governance index constructed in this dissertation by showing that firms (identified by the governance index) with strong corporate governance mechanism effectively constrain the propensity of managers to engage in earnings management and improve the quality of reported earnings. Corporate governance is an effective monitoring device of the quality of financial reporting. Firms with poor governance structure are more likely to avoid reporting small losses by reporting small positive earnings. Furthermore, the magnitude of abnormal accruals is significantly related to governance level. Firms with weak corporate governance structures are more likely to use discretionary accruals to raise reported earnings.

Poor decisions and conflicts of interest by members of company boards of directors have been a factor in the dramatic rise in chief executive officer (CEO) compensation, resulting in a lower return on equity (ROE) for shareholders. The purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationship between CEO compensation, CEO duality, and ROE after controlling for CEO age, CEO tenure, and firm size, as measured by total assets. Agency theory was the theoretical framework for this study. The study examined whether a statistically significant relationship existed between CEO compensation, CEO duality, and ROE, after controlling for CEO age, CEO tenure, and firm size. Archival data were collected and analyzed from a sample of publicly traded firms in the United States listed on the 2016 Standard & Poor's 500 Index. Hierarchical multiple regression techniques were used to test the relationship between variables. The results indicated that there was not a statistically significant relationship between CEO compensation, CEO duality, and ROE after controlling for CEO age, CEO tenure, and firm size. The study may contribute to positive social change by increasing the potential for board of directors' members to implement best practices, contributing to reduced shareholder conflicts, less litigation, higher ROE, and enhanced investor confidence benefiting emerging economies and local communities.

This research is the result of the author’s quest to answer the question whether Corporate Governance is effective in Emerging Markets. Literature on Corporate Governance in the emerging markets of Latin America is limited mostly due to the relatively slower development of capital markets and the late adoption of corporate governance principles. Corporate Governance laws, which largely follow Sarbanes Oxley guidelines, were published and implemented in the mid 00´s and no research has checked their impact on corporate value in Latin America. This research reports compromises two empirical projects. The first project focused on the relationship between boards of directors attributes such size and composition, Corporate Governance law and firm value for Colombia. The second project focused on another Corporate Governance variable, CEO Duality and tested whether it has had any impact in Mexico. This second project also studied whether board attributes such as size and composition and Corporate Governance law were related to firm value. Based on the listed companies from Colombia and Mexico for the years 2001 to 2012 the author found no relationship between board size or composition and firm value. Results from Mexico, where CEO duality is allowed showed that it has no relationship with firm value. These results do not support or contradict either Agency theory or stewardship theory. Results on the impact of the adoption of a Corporate Governance law in firm value are mixed. Results for Colombia contradict previous literature by reporting a positive relationship between Corporate Governance laws and firm results while results from Mexico support previous research by reporting no relationship between these variables. This research is valuable for regulators and policy makers in their quest to assess the impact of the adoption of Corporate Governance laws in emerging markets. . Since effective Corporate Governance is important in easier access to financing it is important for shareholders to know which Corporate Governance mechanisms are positively related to firm value. Similarly, it is also important for investors (both foreign and local) in assessing the risk for equity investments in Colombia and Mexico.

The literature on short selling documents substantial evidence that short sellers are generally informed investors (e.g., Diamond and Verrecchia, 1987; Asquith and Muelbrook, 1996). This dissertation investigates three specific implications of informed short selling for a firm and its investors. The first essay investigates if short selling discourages managers from pursuing over-optimistic projects by reducing equity market timing. By conditioning short selling on firm overvaluation, this essay shows that short selling reduces managerial equity market timing and increases leverage. This moderating impact of short selling is more pronounced in smaller firms and those with low institutional ownership or higher intangible assets. Furthermore, the results show that board independence facilitates the above effect of short selling which helps protect shareholder interests. The second essay investigates if board independence reduces informed short selling prior to earnings announcements. This essay estimates short sellers’ correct prediction of the direction of unexpected quarterly earnings through Logistic regression and finds that short sellers’ correct prediction decreases in firms with independent boards relative to firms with non-independent boards. Furthermore, this effect is more pronounced in firms with CEO duality and large board size. The quasi-natural experiment using the exogenous shock to board independence from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, provides further support to our hypotheses. The third essay provides Sell recommendations by examining pre-announcement short selling of firms ahead of their earnings announcements. The methodology makes Sell recommendations for firms with the highest short position prior to their quarterly earnings announcement. The post-announcement raw, excess, and abnormal returns of firms having the Sell recommendations are statistically and economically significant for multiple-holding periods showing the methodology’s significant trading strategy implication. This dissertation significantly contributes to short selling, governance, capital structure, and investment literature.

Due to various corporate scandals and failures, there has been a renewed interest on the role of boards in the performance of firms. This thesis examines the relationship between the key board characteristics and firm performance. Unlike most studies on boards which predominantly use only financial variables affecting governance, I take a different approach by combining them with non-financial variables. This combined set of variables is used for theoretical and empirical modelling. Based on the extant literature, I develop a conceptual framework and a set of hypotheses to examine the relationship between board characteristics and firm performance. Board characteristics considered in this research include board size, director ownership, CEO duality, gender diversity, educational qualification of board members and number of board meetings. Additionally, I use board size as a moderating variable to examine how the effect of other board characteristics is contingent on board size. Firm performance is measured by return on assets. I test my hypotheses on a longitudinal sample of 156 firms over a four year period from 2004 to 2007. My sample includes all firms listed on New Zealand stock exchange as on November 2007. Empirical analysis is undertaken using Generalised Least Squares analyses. The findings of the study show that board characteristics such as board size, CEO duality and gender diversity were positively related with firm performance, where as director ownership, board meetings and the number of board members with PhD level education was found to be negatively related. Board size was found to be moderating some of these relationships, indicating the critical role being played by board size in the design and role of corporate boards. The findings also provide partial evidence to different governance theories, further indicating the need for theoretical pluralism to gain insights into boards’ functioning. The study contributes to the understanding of board-performance link by examining both the traditional variables such as board size, CEO duality, and number of board meetings as well as other organisational attributes such as gender diversity and competence variables represented by women and PhD holders, respectively. The theoretical framework and the findings of my thesis are expected to stimulate scholars for further research to identify the contingency conditions upon which the board characteristics and firm performance may be dependent.

This research is the result of the author’s quest to answer the question whether Corporate Governance is effective in Emerging Markets. Literature on Corporate Governance in the emerging markets of Latin America is limited mostly due to the relatively slower development of capital markets and the late adoption of corporate governance principles. Corporate Governance laws, which largely follow Sarbanes Oxley guidelines, were published and implemented in the mid 00´s and no research has checked their impact on corporate value in Latin America. This research reports compromises two empirical projects. The first project focused on the relationship between boards of directors attributes such size and composition, Corporate Governance law and firm value for Colombia. The second project focused on another Corporate Governance variable, CEO Duality and tested whether it has had any impact in Mexico. This second project also studied whether board attributes such as size and composition and Corporate Governance law were related to firm value. Based on the listed companies from Colombia and Mexico for the years 2001 to 2012 the author found no relationship between board size or composition and firm value. Results from Mexico, where CEO duality is allowed showed that it has no relationship with firm value. These results do not support or contradict either Agency theory or stewardship theory. Results on the impact of the adoption of a Corporate Governance law in firm value are mixed. Results for Colombia contradict previous literature by reporting a positive relationship between Corporate Governance laws and firm results while results from Mexico support previous research by reporting no relationship between these variables. This research is valuable for regulators and policy makers in their quest to assess the impact of the adoption of Corporate Governance laws in emerging markets. . Since effective Corporate Governance is important in easier access to financing it is important for shareholders to know which Corporate Governance mechanisms are positively related to firm value. Similarly, it is also important for investors (both foreign and local) in assessing the risk for equity investments in Colombia and Mexico.

Due to various corporate scandals and failures, there has been a renewed interest on the role of boards in the performance of firms. This thesis examines the relationship between the key board characteristics and firm performance. Unlike most studies on boards which predominantly use only financial variables affecting governance, I take a different approach by combining them with non-financial variables. This combined set of variables is used for theoretical and empirical modelling. Based on the extant literature, I develop a conceptual framework and a set of hypotheses to examine the relationship between board characteristics and firm performance. Board characteristics considered in this research include board size, director ownership, CEO duality, gender diversity, educational qualification of board members and number of board meetings. Additionally, I use board size as a moderating variable to examine how the effect of other board characteristics is contingent on board size. Firm performance is measured by return on assets. I test my hypotheses on a longitudinal sample of 156 firms over a four year period from 2004 to 2007. My sample includes all firms listed on New Zealand stock exchange as on November 2007. Empirical analysis is undertaken using Generalised Least Squares analyses. The findings of the study show that board characteristics such as board size, CEO duality and gender diversity were positively related with firm performance, where as director ownership, board meetings and the number of board members with PhD level education was found to be negatively related. Board size was found to be moderating some of these relationships, indicating the critical role being played by board size in the design and role of corporate boards. The findings also provide partial evidence to different governance theories, further indicating the need for theoretical pluralism to gain insights into boards’ functioning. The study contributes to the understanding of board-performance link by examining both the traditional variables such as board size, CEO duality, and number of board meetings as well as other organisational attributes such as gender diversity and competence variables represented by women and PhD holders, respectively. The theoretical framework and the findings of my thesis are expected to stimulate scholars for further research to identify the contingency conditions upon which the board characteristics and firm performance may be dependent.

Background: CEO duality has been a highly discussed topic for the last 20 years. The trend shows that more and more companies and countries move towards a separation of the roles of CEO and chairman of the board, but the empirical results show little evidence that this is beneficial for firm performance. The two main accepted theories explaining if CEO duality has a positive or negative effect on firm performance has been the agency theory and the stewardship theory Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explain CEO duality´s effect on firm performance based on the agency and stewardship theory by analyzing and comparing the U.S. as an agency country versus Sweden & Japan as a stewardship country. The study also aims to contribute with evidence if a stewardship country as Sweden instead would benefit from a CEO duality board structure.   Method: To be able to fulfill our purpose was a deductive approach used for this study. A quantitative empirical method is used and data for the various dependent, independent and control variables were collected in order to get the results needed to be able to give answers to the stated hypotheses. The data collection consists of data from a total of 200 firms. 100 firms were collected from the U.S. market in order to represent the agency theory where 50 had a CEO duality board structure and 50 without. Furthermore, data from 50 Swedish non-CEO duality companies and 50 Japanese firms with CEO duality were collected as the stewardship country. The data was obtained between the years 2016-2020. Conclusion: The result indicates that CEO duality on some performance variables have a negative impact on firm performance. Contrary to our first hypothesis, our results suggested evidence that CEO duality had a negative effect on firm performance in the stewardship country (Sweden & Japan). In line with our second hypothesis, our results also suggested that CEO duality also had a negative impact on firm performance in the agency country, USA. Although not all performance variables were significant, the thesis could not provide any support for the stewardship theory explaining CEO duality relationship on firm performance.

Recent failure of such companies as Enron, Worldcom and Parmala showed that there are internal reasons contributing to company’s financial distress. Financial distress is a condition when a company fails to meet its debt obligations. Board of directors is liable for long-term decisions and their ineffective work in monitoring and controlling management can influence companies’ performance. With that in mind, in this degree project, we would like to answer the following research question: “What is the relationship between characteristics of Board and probability of financial distress, measured by Altman’s Z-score models in Sweden and Denmark?”   The epistemological and ontological choices for our study were positivism and objectivism with deductive approach. We have calculated Z-scores of Swedish and Danish companies in order to detect distressed and healthy companies. Further on, the information about board composition in each company was collected; mainly we were interested in board independence, board size, board ownership, COB ownership, CEO duality and employee representatives.   In order to examine if there is a relationship between board composition and financial distress, we have done Multiple and Binary Regression analyses. Based on the results we can state that board independence, board ownership and employee representatives and market capitalization (control variable) have significant relationship with probability of financial distress. Our study is interesting since we have looked at employee representatives, as a board characterectic that is specific for Nordic countries and that was not studied before. In addition, we have found that there is no CEO duality in Sweden and Denmark, since all companies in our sample followed the Companies’ Acts. COB ownership, the additional variable we wanted to test and board size have shown no significant relationship.

Depending on their needs for enhancing and sustaining their business and market values, some firms choose to operate with a corporate governance structure of CEO duality, in which an executive serves as the CEO and the chairperson of the board of directors. The problem addressed in this study is that past empirical and theoretical studies of the relationship between CEO duality and firm performance of organizations across different industries have generated ambiguous results, and no studies have focused specifically on the relationship between CEO duality and financial performance of not-for-profit hospitals. Based on agency and stewardship theories, and considering that CEO duality's effects on firms' financial performance are contextually specific to each type of industry and dependent on certain industry conditions, the purpose of this quantitative study was to answer 3 research questions that examine the relationship between CEO duality, presence of physicians on governance board, hospital size, hospital age, board size, and financial performance of not-for-profit hospitals. This study used multiple regression analyses of data of financial indicators from 146 U.S. not-for-profit hospitals selected from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development database of California, for the period from 2009 to 2012. The results of this study suggested CEO duality and presence of physicians on healthcare governance were not related to financial performance of not-for-profit hospitals. The outcomes of this study can promote positive social change by bringing awareness of appropriate healthcare governance structures that enhance organizational effectiveness and sustain hospitals' charitable missions of provision of community services and transformation of communities and society.