In "Corporate Governance, Accountability, and Pressures to Perform: An International Study", Professor Demirag provides an up-to-date review of the structures and characteristics of the various financial and corporate governance systems that exist in different countries around the world. The scope of this book is wide-ranging and reflects the authors' extensive experience in this area. The book provides a useful framework for addressing variety of key issues including why and how some companies take advantage of differences in corporate governance practices, while others fail, in the performance and management of their research and development practices. This book explores how corporate governance systems in various European countries, the United States, Australia and Japan are embedded in their overall national financial systems and whether the national corporate governance systems are converging to some extent. Through the use of a survey, the book examines how various financial and corporate governance systems protect companies from, or expose them to, short-term pressures. An attempt is also made to measure the short-term perceptions of over one thousand top company executives internationally and to show how they react to these pressures in the management of their research and development. The ultimate aim of this book is to identify those financial systems and corporate governance structures where short-term pressures are resisted and longer-term investment decisions are encouraged.