We investigate marginal compensation rates in mutual fund advisory contracts and find the following. Equity and foreign fund advisors receive higher marginal compensation than debt and domestic fund advisors. Advisors of funds with greater turnover receive higher marginal compensation. Also, closedend fund advisors receive higher marginal compensation than open‐end fund advisors. Finally, we find that marginal compensation is lower for advisors of large funds and members of large fund families. We argue that these differences in marginal compensation reflect differences in advisor marginal product, differences in the difficulty of monitoring performance, differences in control environments, and scale economies.

We find that the presence of commercial bankers on the board is positively related to aggregate firm debt. Separating by type of debt, the presence of commercial bankers on the board is positively related to short-term, long-term, and total bank debt. We also find that while the presence of unaffiliated commercial bankers on the board is positively related to bank borrowing, the presence of affiliated commercial bankers on the board is not. The results are consistent with the theory that commercial bankers supply bank debt market expertise, but not with the theory that they sit on boards to monitor lending relationships.

We investigate factors affecting the number of outside directorships held by CEOs. CEOs of firms with growth opportunities hold fewer outside directorships than CEOs of firms consisting primarily of assets-in-place. We find evidence consistent with CEOs holding more outside directorships as they transfer decision rights to their eventual successors. We also find that when employees (not necessarily CEOs) of two different firms sit on each other's boards, CEOs hold more outside directorships, suggesting CEO participation bonds the relationship between the two firms. We find little evidence that outside directorships represent unchecked perquisite consumption on the part of CEOs.

We examine the influence of NYSE specialist firm organizational form on the nature of liquidity provision. We compare closely held firms whose specialists provide liquidity with their own capital to widely held firms whose specialists provide liquidity with diffusely owned capital. We argue that specialists using their own capital have a greater incentive and ability to reduce adverse selection costs, but face a greater cost of capital. Differences in the proportion of spreads due to adverse selection costs, large trade frequency, the sensitivity between depth and spreads, and price stabilization support this argument.

We investigate the choice of organizational form for investment funds. We find that funds that hold less liquid securities with less transparent prices are more likely to be closed-end. The relation is economically meaningful as well as statistically significant. Our results are consistent with Fama and Jensen's [J. Law Econ. 26 (1983a) 327; J. Law Econ. 26 (1983b) 301] prediction that redeemable shares are not efficient when assets are relatively illiquid and asset prices are difficult to observe.

We investigate the option to invest in derivative securities using a large sample of mutual funds. We find that those funds with the greatest transaction-cost benefit tend to permit investment in derivatives, and that funds tend to permit investment only in those derivatives that offer transaction-cost benefits. Our results indicate that a fund's decision to permit investment in derivatives is driven by increased efficiency rather than advisor opportunism.

We extend the literature on director independence and the role of the board by focusing on the importance of audit committees in the contracting process. We find that the demand for independent and active audit committees is positively related to the demand for accounting certification. In particular, we find that the likelihood of a firm having a completely independent and active audit committee is negatively related to firm growth opportunities and managerial ownership and positively related to firm size and leverage. Our results suggest that audit committees are an important organizational construct related to the demand for accounting certification.