TY - JOUR AB - Purpose This study aims to investigate the relationship between corporate governance risk and agency costs across different countries.Design/methodology/approach Corporate governance risk indicators were obtained from the Institutional Shareholder Services Europe (S.A.) for 4,135 firms across 27 countries. Agency costs and other control variables were derived from companies’ annual financial reports using the DataStream database. Ordinary least squares multiple regression analysis model was used to test the study hypothesis.Findings Agency costs have a significant negative impact on corporate governance risk across countries. The extent of corporate governance mechanisms used, however, varies across geographic regions and industry types. The relationship between corporate governance risk and agency costs is more obvious in the non-financial than financial sector. These results were robust after several statistical checks.Practical implications The findings will help stakeholders, including corporate management, regulators and investors to improve corporate governance mechanisms and capital allocation decisions across countries.Originality/value Evidence is provided on the role of agency costs in corporate governance risk across geographic regions for financial and non-financial companies. The paper also overcomes common problems in corporate governance research such as construct validity, limited data and endogeneity. VL - 18 IS - 2 SN - 1472-0701 DO - 10.1108/CG-08-2017-0195 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/CG-08-2017-0195 AU - ElKelish Walaa Wahid PY - 2017 Y1 - 2017/01/01 TI - Corporate governance risk and the agency problem T2 - Corporate Governance: The International Journal of Business in Society PB - Emerald Publishing Limited SP - 254 EP - 269 Y2 - 2024/03/29 ER -