An Excellent Introduction to Standard Corporate Governance
4 stars
This is an excellent introduction to the mainstream view of corporate governance, with Larcker and Tayan covering a ton of ground in this compact volume. The book isn't prescriptive, instead laying out much of the research around the standard view of what occupies corporate boards and leaving it to the reader to determine whether that makes sense or not. There are, of course, some major issues with this which the authors do call out - how much do CEOs actually matter? What does "ESG" even mean? I would've liked some more direct grappling with these questions, and given that so much of the research that's reviewed here fails basic statistics and causality tests I think it would have been better to either expand the book or shorten the section on ESG. Nevertheless, this is a great book on an essential topic even if you're not on a board. Highly recommend
This is an excellent introduction to the mainstream view of corporate governance, with Larcker and Tayan covering a ton of ground in this compact volume. The book isn't prescriptive, instead laying out much of the research around the standard view of what occupies corporate boards and leaving it to the reader to determine whether that makes sense or not. There are, of course, some major issues with this which the authors do call out - how much do CEOs actually matter? What does "ESG" even mean? I would've liked some more direct grappling with these questions, and given that so much of the research that's reviewed here fails basic statistics and causality tests I think it would have been better to either expand the book or shorten the section on ESG. Nevertheless, this is a great book on an essential topic even if you're not on a board. Highly recommend