Abstract This paper provides evidence that the #MeToo movement revised investors’ beliefs about the costs (benefits) of fostering an exclusive (inclusive) culture, as reflected by the absence (presence of a critical mass) of women directors in the board room. Tracking a timeline of events associated with the #MeToo movement that begin with the Harvey Weinstein exposé in October 2017 in the New York Times , we document contrasting market reactions to the movement depending on the existing culture of the firm. Firms that historically excluded women from their board experienced a negative market response as momentum for the cause increased, whereas investors responded favorably to firms that historically embraced the inclusion of women on their boards. In contrast, we do not detect differences in the market’s response to randomly generated pseudo-events during the same time frame when comparing firms with exclusive and inclusive cultures. In the context of increased regulator attention to board gender diversity, as well as the ESG activist campaigns by large institutional investors, our study documents a shift in investors’ beliefs about the risks associated with sexual misconduct and about the value of having women in the boardroom shaping the culture of the firm.

ABSTRACT One of the prime responsibilities of the board of directors is to understand and oversee its firm's risk profile. We exploit a recent European Union (EU) regulation, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as a quasi‐exogenous shock to the cyber risk landscape to assess whether boards of US firms changed their focus and governance structures to deal with this new challenge. The GDPR encompasses a sweeping set of regulations aimed at protecting EU citizens from unwanted uses of their personal Internet data. Although an EU regulation, the GDPR applies to all US public firms with at least one EU user. Adopting a difference‐in‐differences methodology, we use firms that already fall under a US data privacy regulation as a control group and find that boards of treated US firms, on average, increase their focus on cyber risk, add more directors with cyber/IT expertise, and more frequently assign cyber risk oversight to the board or to a board committee. In cross‐sectional tests, we show that these changes are positively associated with a firm's ex ante cyber risk, but are unrelated to whether a firm had a large EU presence, suggesting a more global reaction to the GDPR. In addition, we examine some of the consequences of these board changes. We find boards that promptly responded by changing their board focus, expertise, and monitoring assignment of cyber risk around the passage of GDPR had fewer future cyberattacks/data breaches and less related media attention. Our findings suggest that, on average, American corporate boards promptly responded to changes in the cyber risk environment in ways that reduced their firms' overall future cyber risk. Our results have implications for the efficacy and flexibility of US corporate boards to respond to unexpected changes in risk.