Open Access Library Journal 2019, Volume 6, e5323 ISSN Online: 2333-9721 ISSN Print: 2333-9705 DOI: 10.4236/oalib.1105323 Apr. 16, 2019 1 Open Access Library Journal Boards of Directors’ Characteristics and Firm Value: A Comparative Study between Egypt and USA Wafaa F. Salem, Saad A. Metawe, Amr A. Youssef, Mohamed B. Mohamed Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport, Alexandria, Egypt Abstract Purpose This research aims to compare the effect of board of directors’ characteristics on the firm’s value in Egypt as an emerging country and USA as a developed country. Five characteristics have been exposed from the literature review that may influence the enhancement of a firm’s value. In corporate governance, these characteristics are CEO duality, board inde- pendence, board size, board meetings and gender diversity. Design The model is developed and 84 Egyptian firms listed on the Egyptian stock ex- change and 27 American firms listed on The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) are utilized in this research for testing this model. The research covers a six-year period (2012-2017). Five main hypotheses and ten sub-hypotheses were derived from the model. GLS regression is used to test these hypotheses. Findings The results of this research revealed that board of directors’ cha- racteristics affects firm value almost in the same way in both Egypt and the USA. The results revealed that board independence, board meetings and gender diversity are positively and significantly related to firm value in both countries. Furthermore, it displayed that board size affected firm value in both the Egyptian and American contexts negatively and significantly. Fi- nally, the results showed that the CEO duality has a positive effect on firm value in the Egyptian setting while it has a negative effect on the firm value in the American setting. This research contributes to the literature on the subject of how corporate governance enhances a firm’s value. Participants in the stock market would benefit from the results when assessing the board of directors’ roles in enhancing the firm’s value. Regulators will be able to use the results of this research to recognize the critical characteristics of corporate governance and to assess the governance practices of the board of directors. How to cite this paper: Salem, W.F., Metawe, S.A., Youssef, A.A. and Mohamed, M.B. (2019) Boards of Directors’ Charac- teristics and Firm Value: A Comparative Study between Egypt and USA. Open Access Library Journal, 6: e5323. https://doi.org/10.4236/oalib.1105323 Received: March 10, 2019 Accepted: April 13, 2019 Published: April 16, 2019 Copyright © 2019 by author(s) and Open Access Library Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access