This study documents a positive, economically meaningful impact of executives' general managerial skills on shareholder value. Examining 171 sudden executive deaths over thirty years, we find that a one-standard-deviation increase in the general ability index corresponds to at least a 1.5...

This study documents a positive, economically meaningful impact of executives’ general managerial skills on shareholder value. Examining 171 sudden executive deaths over thirty years, we find that a one-standard-deviation increase in the general ability index corresponds to at least a 1.5...

This study finds a positive, economically meaningful impact of generalist chief executive officers (CEOs) on shareholder value using 164 sudden deaths and 345 non-sudden exogenous turnovers. The higher a departing CEO's general ability index (GAI), independently and relative to her successor,...

Surveys of corporate risk management document that selective hedging, where managers incorporate their market views into firms’ hedging programs, is widespread in the U.S. and other countries. Stulz (1996) argues that selective hedging could enhance the value of firms that possess an...

We study the relations between governance mechanisms (internal and external), conference call voluntary disclosures (incidence and length), and CEO compensation using hand-collected data on conference calls, corporate governance, and compensation. We hypothesize and show that institutions push...

We examine the distinct effects of generalist-specialist versus insider-outsider attributes on Chief Executive Officer (CEO) compensation patterns. Our cross-sectional results show that each attribute has a significant impact on both the level and structure of CEO compensation. CEOs with a high...

I use the stock price reaction to sudden, unexpected senior executive (Chairman, CEO or President) deaths to study managerial entrenchment. If a highly effective manager dies unexpectedly, the stock price reaction should be negative. If however death removes an entrenched manager when the board...

In many markets, changes in the spot price are partially predictable. We show that when this is the case: 1) although unbiased, traditional regression estimates of the minimum variance hedge ratio are inefficient, 2) estimates of the riskiness of both hedged and unhedged positions are biased...

This study provides strong evidence of a causal effect of risk-taking incentives provided by option compensation on corporate risk management. We utilize the passage of FAS 123R, which required firms to expense options, to investigate how CEO option compensation affects the hedging behavior of...