What do Boards Really Do? Evidence from Minutes of Board Meetings

Miriam Schwartz-Ziv, Michael Weisbach

NBER Working Paper No. 17509
Issued in October 2011

---- Acknowledgements -----

Miriam Schwartz-Ziv is very grateful to Prof. Eugene Kandel and Prof. Michael Weisbach, the co-advisors of her doctoral dissertation, upon which this paper is based. We thank the executive and non-executive employees of the Government Companies Authority of Israel, who allowed us both formally and practically, to conduct this research. We also thank the companies studied, which kindly provided us with private and sensitive data. In addition, we thank participants at the European Financial Management Association 2011 conference, and the following people who shared their thoughts and advice with us at different stages of the preparation of this paper: Renée Adams, Amir Barnea, Alon Eizenberg, Ada Demb, Rudi Fahlenbrach, Julian Franks, Ann Gillette, Ilan Guttman, Stephanie Kramer, Saul Lach, Nadya Malenko, Avri Ravid, Artur Raviv, Daniel Schwartz, Schraga Schwartz, Eytan Sheshinski, and Tammar Zilber. Miriam Schwartz-Ziv also thanks the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology, and Hebrew University’s School of Business Administration, for financial support. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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