Why is poor governance pervasive in the mutual fund industry? Researchers, practitioners and regulators have attributed this failing to a lack of director independence from fund management. This paper proposes an alternate explanation: fund governance is contagious. Fund directors act as vectors, transmitting governance attributes from their primary place of employment to the fund. Using hand-collected director employment data, the paper finds that boards dominated by directors tied to the finance industry, to shareholder unfriendly firms, and to shareholder unfriendly funds, have worse governance. Examining employment shocks, litigations and firm bankruptcies, within a quasi-experimental framework, provides causal evidence that these connections cause fund governance spillover. Overall, the results suggest that contagious governance plays a role in propagating business malpractice in the mutual fund industry.

Six years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the question of whether the U.S. financial system has become less risky remains unanswered. On the one side, new regulations including Dodd-Frank and Basel III have made improvements by requiring higher bank capital, and financial institutions themselves have reduced risk-taking activities. On the other side, it has been argued that “the fundamental risks remained and the efforts of regulators and politicians were simply rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.” (Baily and Elliott, 2013) This paper highlights the changing nature of financial institution risk from 2005 to 2011. It finds that while these institutions have become less risky individually after the crisis, the financial market has become more vulnerable to systemic contagion. The causal inference that the crisis and the post-crisis legislation have gradually changed the nature of financial institution risk is drawn from a quasi-experimental design. This finding suggests that the ever more integrated financial system might experience more synchronized contractions in future crises, providing empirical support for the proposals of the inter-bank collective regulation of banks by Acharya (2009) in addition to the intra-bank collective regulations as in Froot and Stein (1998) and BIS (1996, 1999).

In this study of private placement of public equity (PEP) in China, we examine post-placement stock performance and the possible bases for regulatory approval for PEP applications. We find that firms receiving approvals for PEP issues are financially stronger than those rejected by regulatory authorities and experience significant positive long-term abnormal returns following the placements. These long-term abnormal returns are higher when controlling shareholders participate in the placements and when the capital raised is allocated to asset restructuring or M&As. The evidence supports the view that the government offers a “helping hand” by screening PEP applications and approving those with promising investments and capable investors. Investor overoptimism about investment opportunities at firms that issue equity privately is constrained because PEP participants can effectively monitor and discipline management and help improve investment efficiency over time.