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We examine whether economic policy uncertainty (EPU) affects a board's chief executive officer (CEO) replacement decision. We find that high EPU reduces the likelihood of forced CEO turnover. Our results support the idea that performance assessment may be more difficult when uncertainty is high. We provide evidence that succession planning may be important to firms in reducing the effects of EPU, as firms with an identifiable heir apparent are not influenced by high EPU. Likewise, voluntary CEO turnovers are not affected by EPU. Overall, our results provide evidence that boards make personnel decisions in response to external macroeconomic pressures.

We examine the changes in the board's dual roles of monitoring and advising in times of fluctuating economic policy uncertainty (EPU). We find that a rise in EPU leads boards to reduce the size and increase independence and the proportion of female directors. They also decrease the involvement of insiders and outside executives. There is also a drop in the busyness of the directors. Overall, we find that boards enhance their monitoring power to deal with greater EPU.

We utilize a sample of spinoff firms that need to form a new board of directors, to shed light on the chief executive officer (CEO) influence hypothesis. We find spinoff boards with a CEO who was the parent firm CEO to be similarly structured to the boards of industry and size‐matched peers, whereas spinoff boards with nonparent CEOs are structured for greater monitoring. Consistent with our board structure results, the CEO compensation and replacement decisions of parent CEO spinoff boards are more lenient toward spinoff CEOs, whereas those of nonparent CEO spinoff boards are more consistent with protecting shareholder benefits.