The effectiveness of corporate governance: board structure and business technical efficiency in Spain

This study seeks to determine the effectiveness of corporate governance by analyzing the impact of board structure on firm technical efficiency. Resampling methods and bootstrapping techniques applied in Data Envelopment Analysis are used to evaluate firm performance. Truncated regressions are estimated to determine the effect of five board characteristics–board size, board independence, board reputation, board diversity and board activity–on efficiency. The result of this empirical study shows that business technical efficiency increases with a heterogeneous board with a limited number of directorships per director and with a limited activity specified in a reduced number of annual board meetings with a higher number of specialized committees.