Corporate governance mechanisms and financial distress: evidence from a meta-analytic perspective
摘要
This research presents a meta-analysis of 55 empirical studies published from 2008 to 2025 examining the association between several corporate governance mechanisms and financial distress. Our basic meta-regression findings reveal that governance mechanisms such as board meetings, board quality, remuneration committee effectiveness, demographic and executive diversity, executive compensation, and ownership structure are significant determinants of financial distress. Further, our results indicate that the influence of corporate governance mechanisms on financial distress varies across geographical regions. Substantial heterogeneity in effect sizes across studies is also observed to be driven by differences in sources of data, measures of financial distress, estimation techniques, and journal indexing and ranking.