Does Deregulation Affect the Structure of Corporate Governance? Evidence from the US Trucking Industry

Abstract

Deregulation shifts the responsibility for mitigation of agency problems from the regulatory parties to the firms' shareholders. We investigate whether and how governance structure changes in response to the dynamics of the new business environment after the Regulatory Reform Act of 1994 for the US trucking industry. We show that deregulation increases market competition in the trucking industry. The deregulated trucking firms not only adjust internal governance structure but also alter antitakeover provisions to adapt themselves to the competitive status of business environment after deregulation.