Routine - maintaining the same schedule from day to day - saves time. It is also boring and inherently undesirable. As such, the amount of routine a person engages in is partly an economic outcome, with variations in routine generated by variations in the price of time, household income and the...

We examine how executives' behavior outside the workplace, as measured by their ownership of luxury goods (low "frugality") and prior legal infractions, is related to financial reporting risk. We predict and find that CEOs and CFOs with a legal record are more likely to perpetrate fraud. In...

When the mortality rate is high, repeated interaction alone may not sustain cooperation, and religion may play an important role in shaping economic institutions. This insight explains why during the fourteenth century, when plagues decimated populations and the church promoted the doctrine of...

A manager's shareholders, board of directors, and potential future employers are continually assessing his ability. A rich literature has documented that this insight has profound implications for corporate governance because assessment generates incentives (good and bad), introduces assorted...

What makes a good leader? A good leader is able to coordinate his followers around a credible mission statement, which communicates the future course of action of the organization. In practice, leaders learn about the best course of action for the organization over time. While learning helps...

We study the role of firm- and manager-specific heterogeneities in executive compensation. We decompose the variation in executive compensation and find that time invariant firm and especially manager fixed effects explain a majority of the variation in executive pay. We then show that in many...