Based on current say-on-pay voting patterns and empirical evidence for pay-for-performance in the largest 100 US companies, this paper argues that public and shareholder scrutiny of executive compensation will further increase. The result will be much more shareholder rejections of executive...

One of the core elements of corporate leadership – pay for performance – is soon to be paralyzed. But, as we propose here based on analysis of pay-for-performance of the FTSE100 companies, this mustn't be the case. If performance is measured relative to peers like in sports, executive...

Accounting research on choices of inventory valuation methods has focused on various consequences of two extreme methods: LIFO and FIFO. The main consequence studies relate to effects of the differences in taxes payable between the two methods on security prices. However, tax consequences appear...

This study analyzes how promotion-based tournament incentives for non-CEO senior executives affect corporate innovation. We measure tournament incentives using the pay gap between a CEO and the next layer of senior executives. We find that tournament incentives are positively related to...

Using the compensation gap between a CEO and the second-highest-paid CEO in the same Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) as a proxy for local tournament incentives, I document a positive relation between local tournament incentives and firm risk. Specifically, CEOs who face higher local...

Using a news-based index of aggregate policy uncertainty in the US economy, we document a strong negative relation between policy uncertainty and corporate risk-taking. We show that high levels of policy uncertainty are associated with significantly lower future stock return volatility at the...

This paper analyzes how ownership concentration and managerial incentives influences bank risk for a large sample of US banks over the period 1997-2007. Using 2SLS simultaneous equations models, we show that ownership concentration has a positive total effect on bank risk. This is the result of...

This note deals with the simplified case of a principal (e.g., a firm's board of directors) which delegates execution of an economic activity to a business unit (or a subsidiary firm) managed by a manager. It is assumed that the manager has no control over the cash flows injected into the unit...

We investigate the effect of CEO inside debt (i.e. pension benefits and deferred compensation) on firms' asset tangibility and investment. Asset tangibility is measured by Property, Plant and Equipment, Asset Tangibility (Berger, Ofek and Swary, 1996), and tangible assets. Our findings are...

Using CEO severance contracts during 1992-2010, we find that CEOs with a severance contract tend to reduce corporate investments, impede innovation, and decrease firm risk across several dimensions, leading to shareholder value destruction. This negative value effect is stronger during the...