This paper compares the predictions of finite-shareholder models of conditional and unconditional takeover offers with the outcomes of laboratory experiments. In addition to differentiating between types of offers, the experimental designs span small and large firms as well as different levels...

We examine the effect of financial advisor reputation on wealth gains in corporate takeovers. In view of the adversarial nature of a takeover, we construct a measure of the relative reputation of the advisor. We document that the absolute wealth gain as well as the share of the total takeover...

We analyze how changes in labor market conditions influence the relation between a firm's debt level and employee productivity. We document that better (worse) outside employment opportunities create a more negative (positive) relation between employee productivity and debt at both the firm and...

In this article, we study the effectiveness of promotion-based tournament incentives. We simultaneously investigate tournament incentives for the VP and performance- or equity- based (alignment) incentives for the VP and the CEO. We find that tournament incentives, as measured by the pay...

We track the dividend initiation decisions of a sample of 6,588 firms that went public during the period 1979-2005 and find that 873 of them initiated dividends. Our primary objective is to determine whether information signaling can explain the dividend initiation (DI) decision. We find that...

Theory predicts that since a firm with market power has more stable cash flows because of its ability to set prices in the product market, its stock price is less sensitive to order flow (Peress, 2010), which results in greater stock liquidity. We test this prediction on a large sample of firms...

We investigate the link between a firm's leverage and the characteristics of its suppliers and customers. First, we test the hypothesis that firms use decreased leverage as a commitment mechanism to induce suppliers/customers to undertake relationship-specific investments. We find that the...

We develop a unified model of the interactions among investors, fund companies (represented by fund advisors) and fund managers. We show that the interplay between a manager's incentives from her compensation structure and career concerns leads to a non-monotonic (approximately U-shaped)...