حاکمیت شرکتی: مقدمه ویرایشگر Corporate Governance: Editor’s Introduction

Corporate Governance: Editor’s Introduction This special issue includes seven papers presented at the 26th NBER-TCER-CEPR Conference on “Corporate Governance” organized jointly by the Tokyo Center for Economic Research (TCER), the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). After having a preliminary meeting at the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ) on December 8-9, 2016, the conference was held at Kojima Hall in the University of Tokyo on June 22, 2017. The papers have gone through the regular refereeing process of the journal and have been revised on the basis of comments and discussion at the conference, as well as comments from anonymous referees. Economic research on corporate governance used to focus on the potential conflict of interest between the managers of corporations and the shareholders. Recent research expanded the set of entities that could be adversely affected by corporate actions (or inactions). For example, Shleifer and Vishny (1997) defined corporate governance as “the ways in which the suppliers of finance to corporations assure themselves of getting a return on their investment.” Suppliers of finance includes not only shareholders but also banks and other creditors of corporations. The notion of corporate governance was broadened even more by Tirole (2001), who defined it as “design of institutions that induce or force management to internalize the welfare of stakeholders.” This stakeholder view (as opposed to the shareholder-centric view) is now standard in the modern discourse on corporate governance. According to the stakeholder view, companies are operated with full recognition of responsibilities to a range of stakeholders, which includes not only shareholders and other financiers but also employees, suppliers, customers, local residents, and sometimes society in general. Corporate governance is the system by which a company is directed and controlled to fulfill such responsibilities. It consists of the rules, practices and processes through which corporations’ objectives are set and pursued in the context of the social, regulatory and market environment. Interest in the corporate governance practices of modern corporations, particularly in relation to accountability, increased following the high-profile scandals of a number of large corporations during the last decades. In recent years, initiatives for the corporate governance system have significantly accelerated in many advanced economies. Further improvements of corporate governance, e.g., making the governance function not only formally, but also effectively, continue to be a major agenda for many policy makers and international organizations. Such efforts would succeed, however, if a virtuous economic cycle is established.