Bank liquidity and the board of directors

Abstract

This short paper presents the first attempt to examine empirically the relationship between the level of bank liquidity and the structure of the board of directors, in terms of board size and independence. A novel database on these board characteristics is built that includes banks operating in 10 OECD countries during the period 2000-2006. We find a negative relationship between board size and liquidity, while the impact of board independence is U-shaped. Therefore, we contend that considerations linked to these effects can have interesting implications for the design of bank conduct and for the quality of bank portfolios.Banks; Board size and independence; Liquidity risk