Powerful Independent Directors

We are grateful for helpful comments by Olubunmi Faleye, Wayne Lee, Tomas Jandik, Johanna Palmberg, Michael Weisbach, Jingxian Wu, Tim Yeager, seminar participants at Bentley University, Colegio de Estudios Superiores de Administración in Bogota, National University of Singapore, Oklahoma State University, Université Laval, University of Alberta, University of Arkansas, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of New Hampshire, University of Nevada; and conference participants at the Board Options 2014 Seat at the Table Program, 2014 Boston Area Finance Symposium, 2014 Management Association, the Ratio Colloquium for Young Social Scientists, the Southern Finance Association 2013 meetings ("Outstanding Paper in Corporate Finance" award), Sunbelt XXXIV meeting of the International Network for Social Network Analysis Annual Conference; Financial Research Network Conference at the University of New South Wales. The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Bank of Canada, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, National Science Foundation and Arkansas Science and Technology Authority, with resources managed by the Arkansas High Performance Computing Center. These are the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Bank of Canada or the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• January 16, 2014
• September 18, 2015