Does corporate governance really matter for firms performance? Evidence from Italian IPOS market

During recent years, corporate governance has received an increasing attention in the academic debate due to several scandals in financial world and consequent changes in the regulatory framework. Through this paper, we aim to take part in the stimulating debate about the relation between corporate governance and performance. Previous literature on this topic provided a solid theoretical framework for our research. This paper contributes to this investigation with an analysis of the Italian market, by the examination of the relation between the market performance of Italian IPOs and their governance structure. In particular, we find evidence of a positive relation between governance, which we measured by a new and original governance index made by 40 provisions, and IPOs performance occurred in the Italian market during period 1998-2008.