Board Political Superiority and firm performance variability

This study provides empirical evidence that firms with a higher proportion of board directors who are politically more powerful than their CEOs can significantly reduce stock performance variability, but not on accounting performance variability. Our findings show that among independent (female, non-coopted) directors, only those who are politically more powerful than CEOs are effective in their monitoring role. In our additional tests, we show that our findings are not driven by an endogeneity bias. We find some mechanisms through which politically superior boards can mitigate stock performance variability.