Resumen
This paper examines the influence and causal relationship between board of directors independence, CEO duality, and firm value. By estimating multivariate regression models for panel data, unbalanced, for a sample of companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, there resulted a positive influence of the percentage of independent directors on firm value, but down to a threshold of their representation of 47.23 percent, whereupon their influence becomes negative. When we employed fixed-effects models, the relationship previously mentioned was not statistically validated. However, the results provide support for a lack of statistically significant relationship between the percentage of non-executive directors and firm value. Besides, by estimating fixed-effects models we found a positive influence of CEO duality on industry-adjusted Tobin?s Q ratio, but not statistically significant when estimating models without cross-sectional effects. The causal relationships between board independence and firm value identified based on Granger causality are not robust. Keywords: independent directors; non-executive directors; firm value; panel data regression models; Granger causality; vector autoregression JEL Classifications: G32; G34