NBER Causes and Consequences of Corporate Culture

CALL FOR PAPERS

A large share of corporate governance research has focused on how incentive schemes can ameliorate agency problems between shareholders and managers. A number of recent events, however, call into question whether the incentive schemes that address standard agency problems are appropriate when there is a very small probability of extremely large negative payoffs. Social norms and "corporate culture," broadly defined, represent another way of reducing exposure to such risks.

To advance the state of research on the role of corporate culture, and social norms more generally, in affecting managerial behavior, the NBER will host a two-day conference on "Causes and Consequences of Corporate Culture" on December 8-9, 2011. The conference, which will be held in Cambridge, MA, will be organized by Luigi Zingales, an NBER Research Associate and a faculty member at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.

The conference will examine a number of topics, including the impact of social norms and corporate culture on share values and investor wealth. A non-exhaustive list of topics that would be suitable for examination at the conference includes:

The conference will focus on empirical papers, but theoretical papers that address related topics will also be considered. The papers to be included at the conference will be selected on the basis of a long abstract to be submitted by February 28, 2011. Conference versions of papers will be due on November 1, 2011. Accepted papers will be included in the NBER working paper series, and will be considered for inclusion in a special issue of a refereed journal.

Authors of papers that are accepted for the conference will be notified by March 15, 2011

Please upload your submission here:
http://www.nber.org/confsubmit/backend/cfp?id=CCf11