Q&A on Corporate Governance After the Financial Crisis Part 3: "You argue against the conventional wisdom that problems of corporate governance led to the financial crisis of 2008. Why?"

The latest issue of the UCLA Lawyer magazine has a series of Q&As with yours truly about my book Corporate Governance after the Financial Crisis. I'm reprinting the Q&As in this series of blog posts. As the article intro explains, the book argues "that federalizing corporate governance impinges on state sovereignty, hobbles corporate efficiency and shortchanges both investors and the American taxpayer .... Professor Bainbridge offers an incisive analysis of the landscape-altering Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank acts, responses to the near-cataclysmic economic downturns of the last decade," which "advances a critical dialogue about the limits of crisis-driven public policy."

Q: You argue against the conventional wisdom that problems of corporate governance led to the financial crisis of 2008. Why? 

A: There is little evidence that poor corporate governance practices contributed to either the economic turmoil of the last decade in general or the declining competitiveness of U.S. capital markets. In the wake of the tech stock bubble, Bengt Holmstrom and Steven Kaplan published a comprehensive review of U.S. corporate governance that concluded the U.S. corporate governance regime was “well above average” in the global picture. Even when the fallout from the bubble was taken into account, returns on the U.S. stock market equaled or exceeded those of its global competitors during five time periods going back as far as 1982. Likewise, U.S. productivity exceeded that of its major Western competitors. In general, the trend with respect to major corporate governance practices had been toward enhanced management efficiency and accountability. Pay for performance compensation schemes, takeovers, restructurings, increased reliance on independent directors and improved board of director processes all tended to more effectively align management and shareholder interests.

As far as the economic crisis following the bursting of the housing bubble, “[a] striking aspect of the stock market meltdown of 2008 is that it occurred despite the strengthening of U.S. corporate governance over the past few decades and a reorientation toward the promotion of shareholder value.” A recent report commissioned by the New York Stock Exchange reached the same conclusion, finding that “the current corporate governance system generally works well.”