How do staggered boards affect shareholder value ?

This paper examines whether staggered boards reduce firm value or are merely associated with it due to the tendency of low-value firms to maintain staggered boards. To analyze this causal question, we take advantage of a natural experiment involving two offsetting court rulings, separated by several weeks, that affected the antitakeover force of staggered boards for a subset of Delaware firms. We find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that the market viewed the antitakeover force of staggered boards as value-reducing. Our findings have implications for the long-standing policy debate on the desirability of staggered boards.