Introduction

Summary

An introduction to the modern corporate governance project. Using the track record of our efforts to control executive compensation, we see that notwithstanding decades of failure, and considerable evidence that our interventions have been making things worse, modern corporate governance remains fixated on agency cost theory as a normative program of reform. This is a matter of growing concern as corporate governance is gradually adopted as a tool to obtain important environmental and social outcomes. The themes of the book and its methodological approach are summarized. Children’s cartoons are referenced more than you would expect.