Dr. Kouwenberg's Conference Presentation at the University of Cambridge

on 21 April 2009.

CMMU faculty member Dr. Roy Kouwenberg has presented his research on corporate governance at the European Financial Management Symposium on Corporate Governance and Control, held at the University of Cambridge, April 9-10. Leading experts on corporate governance and finance presented their work at the conference, such as Prof. Bernard Black (U. of Texas) and Prof. Ronald Masulis (Vanderbilt).

Dr. Roy presented the paper “Do Firms Decouple Corporate Governance Policy and Practice?”, joint work with Dr. Nasha Ananchotikul (Bank of Thailand, UC Berkeley) and Visit Phunnarungsi (CMMU Ph.D. student). The paper investigates whether Thai listed firms with higher levels of good governance policy adoption are less likely to violate listing rules and laws put in place to protect shareholders. The results suggest that Thai firms on average implement good governance policies substantively, as opposed to symbolically, as violations occur less frequently among firms with better governance. However, the research also finds evidence of higher violations and symbolic governance among a small group of "talk-only" firms, who mainly issues policy statements about governance.

Dr. Roy’s research project was sponsored by a CMMU faculty research grant. The presentation of CMMU’s research at the EFM conference at the University of Cambridge confirms CMMU's status as a leading business school in Asia.