This paper studies the long-term effect of hedge fund activism on the productivity of target firms using plant-level information from the U.S. Census Bureau. A typical target firm improves its production efficiency in the three years after an activist intervention, and the improvements are most...

This paper studies how hedge fund activism reshapes corporate innovation. Firms targeted by hedge fund activists experience an improvement in innovation efficiency during the five-year period following the intervention. Despite a tightening in R&D expenditures, target firms experience increases...

An important milestone often reached in the life of an activist engagement is entering into a “settlement” agreement between the activist and the target's board. Using a comprehensive hand-collected data set, we analyze the drivers, nature, and consequences of such settlement agreements....

We test the empirical validity of a claim that has been playing a central role in debates on corporate governance—the claim that interventions by activist hedge funds have a negative effect on the long-term shareholder value and corporate performance. We subject this claim to a comprehensive...

We analyze the effect of local-level labor market concentration on wages. Using Census data over the period 1977–2009, we find that: (1) local-level employer concentration exhibits substantial cross-sectional and time-series variation and increases over time; (2) consistent with labor market...

We investigate how the length of the net operating loss carryback period affects corporate liquidity and marginal tax rates. We estimate that extending the carryback period from two to five years, as recently proposed in President Obama's budget blueprint, would provide $19 ($34) billion of...

We examine CEO-board dynamics using a new panel dataset that spans 1920 to 2011. The long sample allows us to perform within-firm and within-CEO tests over a long horizon, many for the first time in the governance literature. Consistent with theories of bargaining or dynamic contracting, we find...

An employee's annual earnings fall by 10% the year her firm files for bankruptcy and fall by a cumulative present value of 67% over seven years. This effect is more pronounced in thin labor markets and among small firms that are ultimately liquidated. Compensating wage differentials for this...

We present evidence that the equity premium and the premium of value stocks over growth stocks are explained in the 1982 1996 period with a stochastic discount factor (SDF) calculated as the weighted average of individual households' marginal rate of substitution with low and economically...

We survey 384 CFOs and Treasurers, and conduct in-depth interviews with an additional two dozen, to determine the key factors that drive dividend and share repurchase policies. We find that managers are very reluctant to cut dividends, that dividends are smoothed through time, and that dividend...