TY  - JOUR
AU  - Adams,Renée
AU  - Hermalin,Benjamin E.
AU  - Weisbach,Michael S.
TI  - The Role of Boards of Directors in Corporate Governance:  A Conceptual Framework and Survey
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14486
PY  - 2008
Y2  - November 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14486
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14486.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Renee Adams
UQ Business School
University of Queensland
Brisbane, Qld 4072
Australia
Tel: 61-7-3365 7285
Fax: 61-7-3365 6988
E-Mail: r.adams@business.uq.edu.au

Benjamin Hermalin
Walter Haas School of Business
545 Student Services Building, #1900
University of California
Berkeley, CA  94720-0001
Tel: (510) 642-7575
Fax: (510) 643-1420
E-Mail: hermalin@haas.berkeley.edu

Michael Weisbach
Department of Finance
Fisher College of Business
Ohio State University
2100 Neil Ave.
Columbus, OH  43210
Tel: 614 292 3264
E-Mail: weisbach.2@osu.edu
AB  - This paper is a survey of the literature on boards of directors, with an emphasis on research done subsequent to the Hermalin and Weisbach (2003) survey. The two questions most asked about boards are what determines their makeup and what determines their actions? These questions are fundamentally intertwined, which complicates the study of boards due to the joint endogeneity of makeup and actions. A focus of this survey is on how the literature, theoretical as well as empirically, deals - or on occasions fails to deal - with this complication. We suggest that many studies of boards can best be interpreted as joint statements about both the director-selection process and the effect of board composition on board actions and firm performance.
ER  -