European deposit insurance scheme and bank board composition

This paper investigates whether bank corporate governance can play a role in the aggregate risk score assigned to individual banks by regulators. We exploit regulatory changes at the European level and a fixed-effects model to reduce endogeneity issues. We contribute to the existing literature on bank corporate governance by showing that board age significantly increases bank risk. This may indicate that boards formed by older members are more entrenched and can also be less dynamic. Board size and gender composition of the board are risk-neutral.