Authors: Andreas Andrikopoulos, Anna Merika, Anna Triantafyllou, Tamara Maria Casasola

Title: Corporate governance, financial structure and agency costs: the case of the hospitality industry

Abstract

We investigate the cross section of agency costs in hospitality companies. We explore corporate governance, financial structure and agency costs in 94 US-listed hospitality companies between 2013 and 2017. We discover that agency costs are decreasing in financial leverage, board size, CEO duality, board independence and gender diversity. Moreover, we find that agency costs are higher in bigger hospitality companies and in companies with more frequent board meetings.