It is of great significance to improve the corporate governance structure study whether independent directors play role ‘vase’ in listed companies. Based on social network theory, this article constructs formed by interlocking and examines influence director stock price crash risk. The mechanism test analyses mediating effect principal–agent problem large shareholder’s tunnelling empirical rese...

We use a dynamic model of of financing decisions to measure agency conflicts at the firm level for a large panel of 12,652 firms from 14 countries. Our estimates show that agency conflicts are large and vary significantly across firms and countries. Differences in agency conflicts are largely due to differences in firm-level governance, ownership concentration, and other firm characteristics. T...

We investigate the agency costs of corporate ownership structure and the role of audit committees in mitigating their effect. Using China as a laboratory, where audit committees are voluntary, we study the demand for and value relevance of audit committees conditional on the various agency costs of corporate ownership. Audit committees complement existing internal governance systems by reducing...

This study examines the impact of capital structure on agency costs in 211 non-financial Chinese listed firms for the period 1999-2001. There are two main findings. (1) Firms with high debt to asset ratio have high ratio of annual sales to total assets and high ratio of return-on-equity. If a firm has a high debt to asset ratio, creditors are much more concerned about the payment of interest an...

About the extent of moral agency in the animal kingdom, one view is that only humans are moral agents. Holding a different view, I argue that moral agency depends on the capacity for other-regard and the capacity to be attuned to significance—such that things matter to one. I derive a criterion where a creature is a moral agent if she performs an action that promotes others’ significant interes...