As of February 28, 2006, 958 publicly held companies accelerated the vesting of some or all of their employee stock options in advance of adopting SFAS 123 (R). We examine both the market reaction to these accelerations, as well as the determinants of the decision. Investors, in general, react...

This study investigates the impact of job complexity and firm as well as CFO-specific performance on CFO compensation. We examine job complexity in terms of the intricacies of a firm’s operations and whether the CFO serves on the Board of Directors. Accounting and stock market rates of return...

We investigate the impact of say-on-pay on 2010 executive compensation, finding affected firms reduced compensation and made it more performance-based, with that decrease being greater for firms that previously overpaid their CEOs. We also find the percentage of votes cast against executive pay...

This study investigates the impact of job complexity and firm, as well as CFO-specific performance, on CFO compensation. We find job complexity and overall firm performance affects both CFO salary and bonus, while CFO-specific performance affects CFO bonus. Specifically, we find that CFOs are...

This study investigates some of the most important avenues that mangers use to manipulate the value of stock option grants. It also compares the use of these avenues in firms that issue scheduled options and in firms that issue irregular options. We document that before Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX),...

We examine the role of cash flow from operations (CFO) in CEO cash compensation. We test that CFO is contract-relevant in the presence of earnings, and more so when (1) the quality of earnings relative to the quality of CFO as a measure of performance is low and (2) the need for CFO as a...

Revenue is the closest proxy in financial statements for market size and dominance, factors that often determine the survival and future profits of modern corporations. Hence, revenue may contain information relevant to investors’ decision making, in addition to the information contained in...

The sensitivity of the rank of the change in bonus compensation to firm performance is compared between CEOs and non-CEOs. Executives are classified into four groups: 1) CEOs, 2) high ranking executives, 3) business unit managers, and 4) low ranking executives. There are no differences in bonus...

This paper examines the differential effects of institutional non-blockholders (NONB) and active institutional blockholders (ACTB) on earnings management behavior, as measured by discretional accruals. We propose that NONB stimulates and ACTB mitigates earnings management. We believe that...

We examine the influence of social responsibility ratings on market returns to Arthur Andersen (AA) clients following the Enron audit failure. Chaney and Philipich (2002) found that AA's loss of reputation resulted in negative market returns to AA clients following the Enron audit failure....