Corporate Governance and Equity Prices

Paul Gompers, Joy L. Ishii and Andrew Metrick

No 8449, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Corporate-governance provisions related to takeover defenses and shareholder rights vary substantially across firms. In this paper, we use the incidence of 24 different provisions to build a 'Governance Index' for about 1,500 firms per year, and then we study the relationship between this index and several forward-looking performance measures during the 1990s. We find a striking relationship between corporate governance and stock returns. An investment strategy that bought the firms in the lowest decile of the index (strongest shareholder rights) and sold the firms in the highest decile of the index (weakest shareholder rights) would have earned abnormal returns of 8.5 percent per year during the sample period. Furthermore, the Governance Index is highly correlated with firm value. In 1990, a one-point increase in the index is associated with a 2.4 percentage-point lower value for Tobin's Q. By 1999, this difference had increased significantly, with a one-point increase in the index associated with an 8.9 percentage-point lower value for Tobin's Q. Finally, we find that weaker shareholder rights are associated with lower profits, lower sales growth, higher capital expenditures, and a higher amount of corporate acquisitions. We conclude with a discussion of several causal interpretations.

JEL-codes: G3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-fin and nep-fmk
Note: AP CF
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (55)

Published as 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.

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